Free The Viper Squad by J.B. Hadley Page A

that I think she’ll be safer if
     she knows nothing—absolutely nothing—about my mercenary activities, including who else is involved in them.”
    “I agree with you. Try some of this—it’s not at all bad, for a Swiss wine. Not up to our French standards, of course, but
     palatable.”
    They washed down cheese, smoked sausage, nuts and Swiss chocolate with two bottles of tart white wine andlooked at the jagged snow-capped peaks all around them. A warm breeze blew on them from the direction of Italy.
    This pastoral serenity was suddenly shattered by a jet fighter that swooped down upon them without warning from behind a rock
     face, bent the tall grass about them with its wind as it screamed overhead, crawled like a lizard up a mountain face and disappeared
     over the top.
    The soldiers laughed and one shouted, “I bet the top brass will let us know they have aerial photos of us drinking beer and
     wine on a hillside while we’re meant to be defending our country.”
    This drew several toasts of an obscene nature to the top brass and more laughter.
    Andre said, “That man is not exaggerating when he says they will have photos. There’s a story of a Swiss air show at which
     the American, Russian and Chinese military attaches, along with those of twenty other nations, were settling themselves in
     the grandstand for the show when a Mirage came in the back door, almost scraped the hats off the men in the grandstand and
     did a backflip over a mountain. When the show ended, each attache was presented with an aerial photo of himself looking up
     with a startled expression.”
    Mike laughed. “You forgot to mention, Andre, that Mirages are French-built.”
    “I did? We French are so modest.”
    “Yes, indeed.”
    “In the late fifties, the French army had a group of us training with Mirages in the Charente,” Andre said. “The countryside
     there, all around the town of Cognac, is gently rolling hills with a lot of vineyards. The planes would fly just above the
     ground, moving up and down with its contours, at incredible speeds. Sometimes the Mirages had to search for us while we advanced
     from one point to another, both points known to the pilots. Some of those fliers could almost cut bunches of grapes off the
     vines with a wingtip. They dropped canisters of dye on us and tookphotos. At other times the planes worked with us against a designated target or a moving enemy. They moved too fast to be
     of much use for that—helicopters were better.”
    “I think the Russians would take a bigger hammering here in Switzerland than they are taking in Afghanistan,” Mike said, and
     added, “if they were dumb enough to try conventional warfare in these mountains.”
    It was time for their company to move on. As they passed over a bridge that took the only road over a ravine, Andre and Mike
     looked over the side till they found the unobtrusive metal door in its ferroconcrete side. They knew that inside that locked
     steel door explosives had already been set in place to blow up the bridge. Everything was ready to go. And some local men
     back in the village they had just passed through had the keys and necessary instructions.
    It was said that every key bridge, tunnel and pass in Switzerland was similarly mined and ready to blow on short notice. The
     Swiss could make their mountains impassible in a couple of hours.
    The Russians would almost certainly choose some easier way around them, as had the Germans in World War B.
    Mike was glad he had come. He realized what Andre had wanted him to see—a well-armed and well-prepared populace determined
     to fight, if they had to, for their freedom and way of life. Not a bunch of freeloaders hoping that politicians would keep
     their vague promises to them.
    Rosita insisted on driving. “Please, Chips, let me. I am very good driver.”
    The hired car was insured, so Stadnick did not care how good she was. He gave her the keys. He had picked her up the previous
     night in