Free The Doomfarers of Coramonde by Brian Daley Page B

braking levers, but moisture covered
his brown face. While the three machine gunners searched anxiously around them,
Pomorski, nosing his grenade launcher apprehensively this way and that, played
what he called “tailgate trombone,” eyes-behind on the rear hatch.
    They’d reached
a stand of particularly high grass when the ambush came. Later, Gil was
thankful that Charles Cong hadn’t come up with a land mine for the occasion;
the radiotelephone deception implied that someone had been planning it for a
while. The enemy op’s imitation of Captain Cronkite’s voice had been extremely
adept. Probably the ambush of Lobo was a trial, a tryout preparatory for
a more ambitious trick.
    He never knew
why the first RPG-4 rocket missed. At that range Lobo was a sure hit
unless the man handling the launcher was awfully unsteady, the only explanation
he could think of.
    The rocket
sizzled a foot or so in front of the APC and exploded to the left and rear,
sending shrapnel sponging off the cupola and splash shields.
    The clout of an
AK-47 opened up to the right. Gil brought the .50 around and he and Handelman,
who manned the right-side M-60, opened up on the deep grass in blind reply, the
slower base boom of the sergeant’s piece coupled with the rapid tattoo of
Handelman’s weapon. The man who’d fired the RPG-4 was cut to bits, but they
couldn’t spot the covering man with the AK.
    A gut
conviction gripped Gil. As Woods sent the APC shooting forward, he traversed
his gun to the left and watched for a backup man. He missed the parting of the
grasses caused by the extension of the second launcher, and so did Olivier, for
all their intense surveillance. Gil caught the movement out of the corner of
his eye only in the last, irrevocable moment. The man had waited until they
were slightly past him and he had no worry about hitting his comrades. The
Vietnamese stood up and took quick, competent aim on Lobo’s broad side.
Even as he wrenched at the .50 Gil knew with dismal certainty that neither his
gun nor Olivier’s could come to bear on the track killer in the half second
available to them before the rocket was sped on its way, small and invisibly
swift and incredibly destructive. There was only time to know mournfully that
the next instant would see the missile punch its way through Alpha-Nine and
destroy them all, men and machine.
    All at once the
small brown man who was about to dispatch their deaths from the tube on his
shoulder was flung sideways, bent double. Another cover man with an AK-47 stood
up in surprise, looking to Lobo’s rear, then collapsed in a paroxysm of
pain, leg flying from under him at the sudden insistent pounding of a .50
machine gun. Gil swiveled his head in the direction of the fire, his rear.
    Over Pomorski’s
shoulder he could see, perhaps ten yards behind Lobo, another APC. It
was layered with mud and dust, sides gouged and apparently scorched by flame,
its wooden trim vane crushed and splintered. Bronco Jackson? Impossible; the
transmissions about Jackson had been a hoax.
    The track
commander in the following APC raised a clenched fist to Gil, who returned it
gratefully. He couldn’t read any unit markings on the newcomer because of its
battered condition, nor had he heard it or been aware of its approach until its
main gun had opened up.
    He turned back
to the grips of his own .50, moving to cover the opposite field of fire, when
an intense chill passed over him. Lobo’s surroundings were blotted out
by a world of gray, 360 degrees without content, gone almost the instant it
appeared. Alpha-Nine, 32d ACR, U.S. Army Vietnam, was plunging over a green
sweep of lush meadow, VC and Asian road nowhere to be seen.
    Woods brought
the track to a halt in surprise. Pomorski scanned to the rear as the remaining
three peeked up over their splash shields, all searching for enemies who’d
threatened them and the friendlies who’d rescued them moments before. They
craned their heads around, taking in the