Red Hammer 1994

Rawlings appreciated the pep talk. When the lead FAV’s engine kicked over, his heart leapt out of his chest. Damn, they were noisy! His driver followed suit. Three strides put Rawlings by the passenger side of his FAV. He stepped into the right-hand seat and buckled the heavy harness, cinching his back tight against the padded seat. The FAVs rode surprisingly well, the racing-quality suspension removing all but the most egregious bumps and potholes.

Gonzales’s man pulled out, accelerating smartly, with Rawlings twenty yards to the rear. The four Special Forces men left behind stood helplessly. They would spend the night a few miles from the camp, buried in the brush in case visitors came calling. Hopefully, the morning’s first light would bring the dull throbbing of the returning FAVs and not the sound of Russian infantry BMPs.

The run to the junction had brought nothing unexpected. The decent dirt and gravel road allowed them to settle in, get into a rhythm, and adjust to the conditions. After the first few miles, they had forgotten about the racket. They were convinced they could outrun anything coming after them. The key was to keep on the move.

At the junction, Gonzales split hard left, waving as they disappeared. Rawlings and his men bore right. The dirt road narrowed, becoming more of an improved trail. They were on their own now, blasting along in the moonless night, plunging into a world where the difference between winners and losers was only a matter of seconds and facing down your fears was half the battle.

The FAV flew down the trail at over forty miles an hour, due north, bucking and jerking, and everyone instinctively gripped the frame despite the harnesses. The cold wind stung Rawlings’s face, the occasional bug strike feeling like a sharp slap or a beesting to the cheek. The incessant bouncing made it almost impossible to see through the goggles. Both he and the driver had to flex their neck muscles and shrug their shoulders to steady the thin tubes which sucked up faint IR signatures. Trees on either side flashed by, blurring like a picket fence seen from a highway, their branches arching into an impenetrable canopy. Aircraft or satellites wouldn’t have a prayer of spotting anything underneath. Just maybe, Rawlings thought, the Russians will have their guard down.

They slid around a corner and were startled by the sight. The driver slammed on the brakes, and hunks of dirt were kicked skyward by the spinning wheels, a cloud of dust billowing up around the FAV. Ahead, timber scraps littered the ground as far as they could see, and the narrow path was blocked by tree trunks, remnants of clear cutting.

“Damn it,” said Rawlings as the dust cleared. He stared at it for the longest time. The map didn’t mention anything about this.

“Are we going to backtrack, Captain?” asked Pickford from the basket. The prospect didn’t thrill him. Covering the same ground twice was asking for trouble. But they had to do something and fast. Sitting still was a cardinal sin.

Think, Rawlings scolded himself. The only sound was the purring of the idling FAV. It seemed like an eternity before something came to him. “They had to get this timber out of here somewhere,” he said. “Even a tractor would leave a trail. We’ve just got to find it.” The crew’s reaction indicated a thumbs-up. “Go back a couple hundred yards; see what we can find.” The driver nodded and spun a fast U-turn then headed out at low speed.

“There,” shouted Pickford, his arm extended toward an almost-invisible cut through still-standing trees. They had easily missed it at forty-five miles per hour. It angled off to the northwest. “Take it,” ordered Rawlings.

For two hours, they picked their way through the crude path cut by a tractor and beaten down by logging trucks. In some places the trees still stood, while in others they were cut clean like summer wheat. Their pace had slowed to a crawl, the rough going exhausting and frustrating them. If they didn’t find a main road soon, they’d never make the return rendezvous. The satellite channel had been conspicuously silent; Gonzales’s team had evidently drawn a blank as well.

Suddenly Rawlings’s night-vision goggles filled with minute ghostly figures four hundred yards ahead below a ridge-line. He grabbed the driver’s arm. “Get in those trees,” he said, pointing to the right twenty yards from the trail. The soldier obliged and cut the engine. Pickford unbuckled and leapt from the basket; the gunner stayed put and swung the .50 caliber toward the target. All he could see was a small fire in the distance that looked like a flickering candle.

“Think they saw us?” Pickford asked.

“Don’t think so,” answered Rawlings. He couldn’t believe it. The Russians must have heard the FAV. Down near the Russian camp, an engine roared to life. They heard a truck rumble off. So they have vehicles in the area. Maybe we caught a break, Rawlings thought. But we’d have to move fast.

“How many of them, sir?”