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  When he looked up, Ricard was gone. He turned his attention to what he suspected was the laser installation. He moved the flashlight, starting at the top of the equipment, back and forth, moving lower each pass.

  Gauges, scopes, radar, and readout devices decorated the front of the suite. They weren’t the things that drove the weapon. The real weapon would be in one or two of the boxes that generated the data these readouts displayed. The boxes and displays were held in place much like American avionics, with small finger-bolts that could be twisted open or closed with a few turns of the fingers.

  He stopped, lifted the camera, and took another couple of photographs as his mind raced over the decision on what to carry out of there. He couldn’t take several pieces of gear. He’d never be able to carry the weight. He could carry one, as long it didn’t weigh too much. Tucker squatted and ran the light beneath the console. Between the two chairs was a tall military-black computer server. He reached forward, touched the machine, and rocked it a couple of times. It was loose. He leaned under the table, pulling the flashlight closer to the server for a better view. If anything would tell the scientists back home whether this was the laser weapon or not, this should be it. The CD-ROM was missing, which meant the important data most likely were not on the machine, but it was something he could carry back. Let the experts decide what it holds.

  He squatted and leaned forward, easing his head under the console. The black box was mounted on metal railings with a bar in front locking it in place. Tucker twisted around, lying down on his back.

  The sound of multiple rocks coming through the back door drew his attention. He glanced at his watch. Two minutes before the explosions went, if Ricard was accurate. Tucker reached down and lifted the clasp that locked the server in place. He sat up and pulled the small server forward. It came several inches and then stopped.

  He lay back down and slid under the seat. Damn! He let out a deep breath, a reflection from the flashlight glanced off his watch. He twisted his arm. Less than two minutes.

  More rocks hurled through the door. He heard the master chief calling his name, but ignored it. Tucker reached behind the server and began to rip off connections. Two connections were screwed to the portals in back. Tucker sat up and pulled with all his strength. The connections ripped out of the server. He glanced at his watch. Nearing one minute. Cutting it close, Tucker, he thought. And there’s no prize for being close except in horseshoes. Why did he have to say “make it four minutes?”

  He lifted the server, estimated its weight at twenty pounds. Risking our lives for a twenty-pound piece of avionics that someone thinks will change America’s global power. He tucked it under his right arm and with the Carbine grasped in his left hand, Tucker ran to the back door, careful to step over the plexiglass thing in the middle of the passageway. He glanced forward and saw the flashlight lying on the deck. Too late to go back.

  “Commander, we gotta go!” Master Chief Collins shouted from below, his voice betraying his irritation. Ricard stood unarmed near him.

  “Ricard,” Tucker shouted. “Catch this. It’s about twenty pounds.” Without waiting for an answer, Tucker tossed the gear to Ricard who caught it, going to one knee, as he struggled to keep from dropping it.

  “Shit! If that’s twenty pounds, I’ll eat your shorts,” Ricard muttered as he stood up.

  A second later Tucker stood beside them. Master Chief Collins pointed toward the short taxiway that ran to the tarmac. “Here they come, sir.”

  “And, here we go,” Tucker said, pushing Ricard with the laser avionics toward the fence.

  Spurts of concrete erupted behind Ricard.

  “Goddamn!” Collins shouted. “They’re firing at us.” The master chief lifted his M-4 Carbine and fired a short semi-automatic burst at the French Humvee-like vehicle.

  “Go!” Tucker shouted, firing his own burst at the French.

  The French military vehicle veered off the road and into the bush alongside. Tucker didn’t hear a crash, so they were still alive and would be headed this way.

  “Sir!” Ricard shouted from the fence. “Thirty seconds! You’ve got thirty seconds!”

  Tucker took off running, chasing the master chief toward the opening in the fence. On the other side, Brute held the fence back with his knee, his weapon pointed through one of the links of the fence. Ricard dropped and crawled through.

  The master chief detoured to the right, stopped briefly in front of the generator, and hit a button. Tucker caught a glimpse of him turning toward the fence as the generator ran down; the lights dimmed and flickered for a moment, then went out. The night was theirs. Tucker kept heading toward where he recalled the opening in the fence was before the lights went out. He reached up and flipped the night vision device down. The master chief was crawling through the opening and taking the fence from Brute, sending the giant Seabee down the incline.

  “Hurry, Commander!”

  “Ten seconds!” shouted Ricard from the safety of the incline.

  Tucker dove as he reached the opening, scrambled through, felt the master chief grab him, and the next thing he knew he was sailing across the six feet between the fence and the incline. Brute grabbed him as he rolled over the incline.

  The master chief took a couple of steps, jumped, and like a diver trying to get as much distance between himself and the shoreline, sailed over their heads just as the aircraft exploded. The concussion hit the master chief in midair and added several feet to the jump.

  Tucker flipped up his night vision device and crawled quickly to the edge of the incline in time to see burning pieces of aircraft rain down on the tarmac and the nearby bush.

  “Master Chief, you all right?” Tucker heard Brute ask from behind them. The cursing reply told him Collins was okay.

  A loud crash to their right caused them to jump. They looked at the burning aircraft tire about fifty feet from them.

  “Jesus Christ!” shouted Ricard.

  “So much for them not finding a tire,” Tucker added.

  The four of them laughed. Nothing like danger to bond a military unit.

  Fire engulfed the aircraft, the remaining fuel in the wing tanks blew, roiling flames and smoke leaped into the night sky. In the light of the burning aircraft, French soldiers eased out of the bushes, their weapons pointing toward the fence. Tucker rose to his knee, lifted his Carbine, and fired several bursts over their heads. They quickly disappeared back into the bushes, out of sight. He didn’t want to kill anyone unless he had to.

  “Everyone all right?” Tucker asked.

  “I’m fine,” said Ricard, “except I think I’m going to need a new set of skivvies.”

  “Brute, you okay?” Master Chief Collins asked as he brushed himself off from the tumble he had taken.

  “Yeah, Master Chief. I’m okay, but I think I’ve decided being a Seabee is better than this shit.”

  “All right, guys,” Tucker said. “Let’s get out of here before they get up their nerve and come after us or reinforcement arrives.”

  They eased back along the edge of the jungle the way they came; only now the jungle was lit up by the flames on the other side of the fence. Just as they reached the trail that would take them away from the holocaust behind them, a volley of shots rang out, peppering the tree line above their heads. The four ducked, slid down the incline, and quickly disappeared along the trail at the bottom, heading back to a rendezvous with their only means of escape.

  A hundred yards later, the sound of tracked vehicles rode over the sporadic, but smaller, explosions continuing from the burning aircraft. Tucker recognized the sound as armored personnel carriers — APCs they called them. Tanks would have been louder and more ominous. Tanks would have made the pucker factor go way up. APCs couldn’t follow them into the jungle. Tanks, on the other hand, would view the jungle as a slight obstacle to be knocked aside, rolled over, and flattened.

  “Stay close, gents, and keep those 22s ready to be flipped up,” Tucker said as he picked up
the pace. APCs may not be tanks, but they carry troops, and these troops would be French Foreign Legion. He had fought with Legionnaires a couple of years ago when he was staging anti-terrorist missions out of Djibouti, the small African country at the western end of the Gulf of Aden. The Legionnaires fought hard, fought dirty, and fought to win — much like their renowned nights on the town.

  Legionnaires would follow them into the jungle. Not to do so would smack of failure. To fail would denigrate their reputation, and when a battle clears, a fighting organization’s reputation is its legacy, and that legacy depends on honor, zeal, and tenacity in combat. Life and self were secondary. Especially to the Legion.

  Rapid gunfire broke the silence behind them. Tucker knew the French were saturating the area beyond the fence with automatic fire. They wouldn’t know how many of them there were. Then several explosions occurred.

  “What the hell?”

  “Relax,” Tucker said, his voice failing to sound relaxed. He kept moving, keeping a steady but fast pace. “Mortars. They’re making sure the place is clear before they move in.”

  “Well, at least we have a fence between us and them,” Collins said.

  The sound of an engine revving rode over the gunfire, then gears engaged and the engine was moving. A few seconds later, the noise of metal grinding upon itself filled the jungle.

  “Uh, oh,” Brute said. “There’s no fence between us and them now.”

  He was right, thought Tucker. They be Legionnaires in them thar hills, boys, and this ain’t Deliverance.

  Tucker fought the urge to run. Keep the pace brisk. Those following would move slower, since they’d have no idea what they faced. They would be worried about ambush and booby traps. He, on the other hand, had no such worry; but they had to maintain their stamina to reach the rendezvous point.

  Keep the pace brisk. If they could make the clearing in the next hour, their ride home would—should—be waiting; then the Legionnaires can have the jungle.

  * * *

  Minutes later Tucker glanced again at the GPS readout. He had been doing this every half minute or so. Trails look different when you’re returning. If they took a wrong turn or lost the trail, they still had GPS to get them to the clearing. Two kilometers and forty-five minutes before pickup. Should be okay. He hadn’t heard any sounds of pursuit, but that didn’t mean anything. Legionnaires were quiet. They’d follow the tracks, and by now, Tucker figured, they would have determined that there were only four of them, which meant the pace of their pursuers would have increased. Plus the pursuers would have state-of-the-art reconnaissance hardware, such as night vision devices. Just because it was French didn’t mean it was inferior.

  It never occurred to Tucker to think they wouldn’t be followed. It would have been nice if they could have had more time to make their exit. With the Legionnaires having night vision devices as surely they did, the situation could change severely if they caught up.

  He looked ahead and caught a glimpse of someone peering from behind a tree. From the silhouette, it looked as if the figure was staring right at him. He held up his hand and motioned his team down. How could they have gotten ahead? Brute moved up beside him. Tucker touched him and pointed toward the person near the tree. The moment he pointed, Tucker wished he could have pulled his finger back.

  Brute nodded in understanding. Must only work when you point directly at him, Tucker thought.

  The Seabee tapped Tucker on the shoulder and pointed left. The night vision device highlighted two individuals standing alongside each other, their heads turning slowly back and forth. Tucker could tell the two men carried weapons, but the night vision didn’t permit details such as what type of rifles the two carried. Ricard then tapped him and pulled his attention to the right of the trail ahead. A fourth man squatted on a small mound, his head moving slowly, back and forth, as if trying to decide where the noises they had heard were coming from. Those noises would be Tucker and his men. They weren’t the quietest covert team in the world.

  Tucker crouched motionless, with the exception of his head. He scanned the jungle through the night vision device to see how many faced them and where they were located. He counted four, possibly five ahead of them arrayed along both sides of the trail in ambush profile.

  When things are going too easy, nothing can occur that doesn’t make it harder. The trail had been a Godsend to their mission, and now it looked as if they were going to have to leave it.

  Tucker turned to face the others. He held his finger to his lips for quiet and then pointed right. Tucker pushed a couple of bushes apart carefully, matching the soft noise of the wind through the leaves to his own movement. Following, the three Seabees eased off the trail with Tucker and moved as quietly as possible into the bush. To Tucker, they sounded like the Saint Paddy’s Day parade down main street Savannah. Moving through the heavy brush got them off the trail, but meanwhile they were blind to what those waiting in ambush were doing. For all Tucker knew, the men ahead of them may be repositioning even as the four of them tried to put as much distance as possible from the trail.

  He estimated eighty to one hundred full steps from the trail — roughly three hundred feet — when they emerged from the brush to find themselves in a small clearing. A clearing that may have been made by a large animal as it slept. Giant leaves intertwined overhead to form a weak roof, but an effective camouflage. Tucker hoped whatever pressed the brush down to make this depression was a vegetarian.

  Tucker motioned his team nearer him. He pulled their heads close. In a real operation, he would never hold a conference in the middle of a combat situation, but three Seabees in the middle of an ambush without their bulldozers and graders are anything but a normal operation.

  “Master Chief, you’re it. I’m going to see just what we’re up against so we can make up some kind of plan of attack. Wait here. Give me five minutes, then work north before cutting back toward the pickup area.” He tapped the GPS receiver on the master chief’s wrist. “You comfortable?”

  Collins looked at the receiver. “I can work it, sir. But if I follow your directions, we’ll miss our pickup.”

  “Master Chief, better to miss the pickup than die trying to make it.”

  Tucker lifted his M-4 and disappeared into the bush. As the vegetation closed around him, he heard faint German coming from behind them. The Legionnaires have arrived, he thought.

  Minutes later, a stand of trees blocked his way. He stood, angling his body along the trunk of the nearest tree, blending with the nightscape. Tucker surveyed the jungle, and then focused his attention in the direction of the trail. The two ambushers on the right side of the trail were visible, their backs to him. Tucker thought about taking them out, but he knew it would take too much time and the Legionnaires would be here by the time he finished. The ambushers’ heads turned slowly back and forth as they focused on the trail Tucker and his team had vacated.

  Tucker smiled. He wanted to laugh at the irony of it. Sometimes the “Luck God” smiles on you, and this was one of those times. Tucker squatted for a moment, listening to his surroundings. Satisfied, he pushed his way under the brush and started working his way back to where he had left the others.

  CHAPTER 11

  Captain Xavier Bennett placed the telephone receiver back in its cradle, his hand remaining on it for a few seconds. I knew when I called Admiral Holman what his response would be, but juniors keep seniors informed even when they know what’s expected of them. Same thing I will expect when I relieve Admiral Holman next year.

  Xavier leaned back in his chair, his elbows resting on the arms, hands interlocked with the two index fingers tapping his chin. Thoughts about the incident with the Winston Churchill and the French reconnaissance aircraft mixed with anxiety over Tucker Raleigh and the Seabees still somewhere inside Ivory Coast.

  He sighed. He had been doing that a lot lately. He should be lying back, enjoying the African sun, and—other than watching sailors do ship’s work—listening to Seabees
complain about the screw-up with the airfield they were sent to extend and improve. Couldn’t extend something that wasn’t there. Tomorrow, he promised himself, he’d take a Humvee out to the airfield and see for himself the challenges Teddy Klein was bitching about. The Seabees still had some off-loading to do from the Mesa Verde, but with the recent oporder transmitted from Commander, Amphibious Group Two, the ship wasn’t going anywhere soon. They were told to remain in Port Harper, Liberia, until further orders. He did give Commander Klein the use of a CH-53 Super Stallion helicopter to transport people and supplies between the port and the gone-to-hell airfield. That should help a little. He’d probably feel better about loaning the helicopter to the Seabees if the pilots hadn’t been so damn happy about living off the ship. Tent life couldn’t be that great, but then ice chests full of beer could temper most hardships.

  Xavier intended to start Cinderella liberty with the buddy system for the crew tomorrow afternoon. Cinderella liberty was time given to sailors to enjoy the pleasures a port may offer, but around midnight the sailors had to be back onboard ship. The buddy system was just what it sounded like. You signed off the ship with a friend, and when you returned, you’d better have the same buddy with you.

  Liberia was a lot more stable after the defeat of the Jihadists and the Africans who destroyed the government and started executing every American there.

  Xavier reached out and flipped through the two-inch-thick report on his desk. Then his thoughts returned to Liberia. The president of Liberia, before he was killed by terrorists, had taken a lesson from the U.S. model for Israeli citizenship given to American citizens and had offered similar citizenship to African-Americans. The money earned through the issuance of Liberian passports provided Liberia with the necessary American dollars to improve its infrastructure and the standard of living for its citizens. What the president failed to foresee was the number of African-Americans who would emmigrate to Liberia. A small restriction in the passports forbade Liberian citizens not domiciled in Liberia from voting. Brilliant initiatives always adversely affect something, and while the money flowed into the Liberian coffers, American citizens flowed into Liberia.