“The search teams are ready to go in, sir,” Scratchard said, speaking in Dutch but stepping a pace further from the shackled Kaid besides.
“Right,” the captain agreed. “I’ll lead the team from Third Platoon.”
“Captain—”
“Where are the trucks, unbeliever?” demanded Ali ben Cheriff. His voice started on a quaver but lashed at the end.
“—there’s plenty cursed things for you to do besides crawling down a hole with five pongoes. Leave it to the folks whose job it is.”
“There’s nothing left of this operation that Mendoza can’t wrap up,” Mboya said. “Believe me, he won’t like doing it any less, either.”
“Where are the trucks to carry away our children, dog and son of dogs?” cried the Kaid. Beneath the green turban, the rebel’s face was as savage and unyielding as that of a trapped wolf.
“It’s not for fun,” Mboya went on. “There’ll be times I’ll have to send boys out to be killed while I stay back, safe as a staff officer, and run things. But if I lead from the front when I can, when it won’t compromise the mission if I do stop a load—then they’ll do what they’re told a little sharper when it’s me that says it the next time.”
The Kaid spat. Lofted by his anger and the breeze, the gobbet slapped the side of Mboya’s helmet and dribbled down onto his porcelain-sheathed shoulder.
Scratchard turned. Ignoring the automatic weapon slung ready to fire under his arm, he drew a long knife from his boot sheath instead. Three strides separated the non-com from the line of prisoners. He had taken two of them before Mboya caught his shoulder and stopped him. “Easy, Jack,” the captain said.
Ben Cheriff’s gaze was focused on the knife-point. Fear of death could not make the old man yield, but neither was he unmoved by the approach of its steel-winking eye. Scratchard’s own face had no more expression than did the knife itself. The Kaid’s wife lunged at the soldier to the limit of her chain, but the look Scratchard gave her husband dried her throat around the curses within it.
Mboya pulled his man back. “Easy,” he repeated. “I think he’s earned that, don’t you?” He turned Scratchard gently. He did not point out, nor did he need to do so, the three gun-jeeps which had swung down the fifty meters in front of the line of captives. Their crews were tense and still with the weight of their orders. They met Mboya’s eyes comprehendingly but without enthusiasm.
“Right,” said Scratchard mildly. “Well, the quicker we get down that hole, the quicker we get the rest of the job done. Let’s go.”
The five tunnel rats from Third Platoon were already squatting at the entrance from which the rebels had surrendered. Captain Mboya began walking toward them. “You stay on top, Sergeant,” he said. “You don’t need to prove anything.”
Scratchard cursed without heat. “I’ll wait at the tunnel mouth unless something pops. You’ll be out of radio contact and I’ll be curst if I trust anybody else to carry you a message.”
The tunnel rats were rising to their feet, silent men whose faces were in constant, tiny motion. They carried detector wands and sidearms; two had even taken off their body armor and stood in the open air looking paler than shelled shrimp. Mboya cast a glance back over his shoulder at the prisoners and the gun-jeeps beyond. “Do you believe in sin, Sergeant?” he asked.
Scratchard glanced sidelong at his superior. “Don’t know, sir. Not really my field.”
“My brother believes in it,” said the captain, “but I guess he left the Slammers before you transferred out of combat cars. And he isn’t here now, Jack, I am, so I guess we’ll have to dispense with sin today.”
“Team Three ready, sir,” said the black-haired man who probably would have had sergeant’s pips had he not been stripped to the waist.
“Right,” said Mboya. Keying his helmet he went on, “Thrasher to Club One, Club Two. Let’s see what they left us, boys.” And as he stepped toward the tunnel’s mouth, without really thinking about the words until he spoke them, he added, “And the Lord be with us all.”