Trial By Fire. Don Pendleton

snapped his steel in place. “Yes, Sergeant!” The cadet frowned. “How are you going to catch up?”

      “You’ll be cutting the trail for us, Hammer.”

      “But won’t the enemy find it, too?”

      “Hammer, I’m counting on it.”

      Johnson grinned. “Copy that!”

      Bolan clapped Johnson on the shoulder. “You have your orders, Squad Leader. Inform the team and get them moving. I will rendezvous within twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

      “Yes, Sergeant.” Johnson jogged back to the group. “Niner Squad! On me!”

      Bolan turned to Rudipu as Johnson shouted in a decent imitation of a drill sergeant. “Fix bayonets!”

      Bolan spoke quietly over steel clicking in place. “Rude, you’re with me.”

      “Where’re we going, Sarge?”

      “To check on Flight Officer Llewellyn.”

      Rudipu considered that. “Really?”

      “What, you don’t want to see his big send-off?”

      “Of…course I do, Sergeant.”

      “Good.”

      “Sarge?”

      “Yeah?”

      “What does that mean?”

      “You and I are a sniper-scout team,” Bolan replied. “We’re going to go establish the position of the enemy.”

      “Oh, shit!”

      “You with me, Rude? You can say no and I’ll get somebody else, but I’m still thinking you’re the best shot in Niner Squad. I’ll do the heavy lifting on this one, but every sniper team needs a spotter and a backup shooter.”

      “Sarge? I don’t know if I’m cut out to be a sniper.”

      “Enlighten me,” Bolan said.

      “I mean, I love shooting, but I’m with Shelby.”

      “Who?” Bolan asked.

      Rudipu grinned. “I mean, Snake, Sergeant. She and I are both Air Force academy cadets. I want jets.”

      “I noticed you want Miss von Kwakkenbos, too, Rude. Noticed you noticing someone cut off the top three buttons of her blouse with a machete whenever you thought no one is watching.”

      Rudipu flushed scarlet, but he salvaged some dignity. “Well, I do like blondes, Sarge.”

      “Who doesn’t?” Bolan liked the cadet’s attitude. “So does the enemy, and you do know what they’re going to do to her if they catch her?”

      Rude looked down unhappily. “Yeah.”

      “What they’ll do to Snake?”

      “Yeah.”

      “What they’ll do to you?”

      “Sarge!” Rudipu was appalled.

      “Rude, this isn’t quite the Ninth Circle of Hell, but you can see it from here. There are predators in these woods, four-legged and otherwise. And around here, someone like you is considered a light snack. You understand?”

      The diminutive cadet looked down glumly. “Yeah.”

      “But you have an advantage, Rude. Do you know what that is?”

      Rudipu raised his Dragunov. “Precision rifle-fire?”

      “That’s right, Rude. Precision rifle-fire.”

      The cadet took a deep breath. “You’re right, Sarge. It’s time to cowboy up.”

      “Time to marksman up, Rude.” Bolan turned and broke into a light jog. “Try to keep up.”

      OBUA POINTED AT THE GLADE. “They have buried another one of their dead, Caesar.”

      “The wounded one?” Segawa asked. “The copilot?”

      “That would be my guess.” Obua nodded in obeisance to Caesar’s consort. “Mama Waldi.”

      The woman was six feet tall. Though she had the breasts and hips of a fertility goddess, her limbs and waist stretched out like those of a famine victim. Her matted dreadlocks fell to her tailbone. Amulets and fetishes mounded her neck and shoulders. She carried a butcher knife on her belt, and in her hands she carried a hunga munga. The African throwing weapon looked like a cross between a hand sickle, a hatchet and a scythe, with a couple of extra knife blades for added effect. It was a weapon that Mama Waldi always sharpened but never cleaned. The edges of the pitted blades gleamed out of the dried gore caking them like quicksilver. Obua had seen Mama Waldi take off a fleeing man’s leg just below the knee with one throw. The woman had the flat black eyes of a shark, and she had filed her teeth to points to match. “I want ’em bones, Brother Obua, and all the brethren shall partake of the white bread of his flesh.”

      Obua licked his lips. It had been some time since he had eaten the long pig done right. The pilot had been crucified and burned with gasoline. It had made his poor flesh a tough and acrid meal. Obua thought about the copilot a day and night in the ground with his juices running. That would be toothsome, meat-falling-off-the-bone fare. “As you say, Mama.”

      “I want the little one. The girl.”

      Segawa smiled. “And she shall be delivered to you, Mama.”

      “Blue-eyed devil woman die in my fire and be our bread.”

      Obua gave Segawa an alarmed look. The army leader put his hand on Mama Waldi’s shoulder. “Not before Brother Obua and the brethren have shown her paradise.”

      Mama Waldi exposed her pointed teeth. “Then they shall know her flesh in sin and then partake of her flesh as the bread of forgiveness.”

      “You are wise, Mama.” Segawa to where Obua had pointed. Four of the men were busily disinterring the copilot’s body with their machetes. “They bury him, brother? Knowing what we would do? Why would they waste the time?”

      Obua shrugged. “They are Americans, pale, poor-relation Christians. They are…sentimental.”

      “Where do you find them now, brother?”

      “They make no effort to hide their tracks. They make for the mountains. They make for the Ugandan border.”

      “Zion,” Mama Waldi intoned.

      Segawa and Obua spoke in unison. “Holy Zion, the promised land.” Obua stared up into the misty mountaintops. “Someone has given them backbone. Given them courage.”

      “These our mountains. These our forests.” Segawa looked at the trail their quarry had left. “They cannot outrun us.”

      Mama Waldi gazed westward. “I wonder if the white children will turn and fight?”

      A huge door-slamming sound answered the witch doctor’s question. Birds erupted out of the trees and monkeys screamed as pale orange fire pulsed at the gravesite. The men digging screamed and disappeared in white streamers of burning particulate. Fire crawled up the trees ringing the glade in a burn that moisture would not stop. Only one of the four diggers came out of the smoking curtain. Vusi was barely recognizable as a man. He screamed and flailed at the white phosphorus covering his body in swathes and burning his flesh to the bone.

      Segawa drew his panga. He took a skipping run forward and wheeled his chopper like a bowler about to pitch a cricket ball. Vusi fell to his knees shrieking and burning. Segawa swung, and Vusi’s head flew from his shoulders. His body slumped bonelessly, and his head tumbled down the slope.

      Kayizi broke out of the underbrush. He had taken a wide berth around the white phosphorus. He took one glance at Vusi’s decapitated corpse and got on with