Night Probe! (Dirk Pitt 6)

His experience came in handy as he read the signs of recent human passage. The footprints had been made by a short man, he judged, wearing a size seven combat boot similar to his own. Moisture from the mist had not yet redampened the impressions, an indication to Willapa's trained eye that they were no more than half an hour old.

The tracks came from the direction of a thicket and stopped at a tree, then they returned. Willapa noted with amusement the thin wisp of vapor that rose from the tree trunk. Someone had walked from the thicket, relieved himself and walked back again.

He looked around at his flanks, but none of his squad was visible. His sergeant had sent him out to scout ahead and the rest had not caught up yet.

Willapa stealthily climbed into the crotch of a tree and peered into the thicket. From his vantage point in height he could see the outline of a head and shoulders hunched over a fallen log.

"All right," he shouted, "I know you're in there. Come out with your hands up."

Willapa's answer was a hail of bullets that flayed the bark off the tree below him.

"Christ almighty!" he muttered in astonishment. No one had told him he might be shot at.

He aimed his weapon, pulled the trigger and sprayed the thicket.

The firing on the hill intensified and echoed through the valley. Lieutenant Sanchez snatched up a field radio. "Sergeant Ryan, do you read?"

Ryan answered almost immediately. "Ryan here, go ahead, sir."

"What in hell is going on up there?"

"We stumbled on a hornet's nest," Ryan replied jerkily. "It's like the Battle of the Bulge. I've already taken three casualties."

Sanchez was stunned by the appalling news. "Who's firing on you?"

"They ain't no farmers with pitchforks. We're up against an elite outfit."

"Explain."

"We're being hit with assault rifles by guys who damn well know how to use them."

"We're in for it now," Shaw shouted, ducking his head as a continuous burst of fire raked the leaves above. "They're coming at us from the rear."

"No amateurs, those Yanks," Macklin yelled back. "They're biding their time and whittling us down."

"The longer they wait, the better." Shaw crawled over to the pit where Caldweiler and three others were still frantically digging, oblivious to the battle going on around them. "Any chance of breaking through?"

"You'll be the first to know when we do," the Welshman grunted. The sweat was pouring down his face as he hauled up a bucket containing a large boulder. "We're near seventy feet down. I can't tell you any more than that."

Shaw ducked suddenly as a bullet ricocheted off the rock in Caldweiler's hands and took away the left heel of his boot.

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"You better lay low till I call you," Caldweiler said calmly, as though remarking about the weather.

Shaw got the message. He dropped down into the shelter of a shallow depression beside Burton-Angus, who looked to be enjoying himself returning the fire that blasted out of the surrounding woods.

"Hit anything?" asked Shaw.

"Sneaky bastards never show themselves," said Burton Angus "They learned their lessons in Vietnam."

He rose to his knees and fired a long leisurely burst into a dense undergrowth. His answer was a rain of bullets that hammered into the ground around him. He abruptly jerked upright and fell back without a sound.

Shaw crouched over him. Blood was beginning to seep from three evenly spaced holes across his chest.

He looked up at Shaw, the brown eyes beginning to dull, the face already turning pale.

"Bloomin' queer," he rasped. "Getting shot on American soil. Who would have believed it." The eyes went unseeing and he was gone.