TURNING THE GRAIN: PART I OF II by Barry B. Longyear * * * * Illustrated by Mark Evans * * * * The best-laid plans can go very ugly.... * * * * I The sun’s rim edged above the desert horizon, brushing the tops of the plateau’s night-chilled cliffs with pale gold. Gilf Kebir’s day creatures began awakening, noted the light, and moved toward the promise of warmth. Night things backed deeper into shadows, away from the moisture-sucking heat of Egypt’s Western Desert, away from the ever-present eyes of predators. In one such shadow Gordon Redcliff raised the front detector cover on his rifle’s electronic sight and swept the wadi below. The ones down there had finished their work: seven shooters just this side of the narrows on the rocky trail climbing to the plateau where the expedition camped. Two more shooters in the shadows up on the wide slope above the narrows. From his perch, the shadowed ledge hidden from below by the reflected glare of the sun on the cliff face adjoining it, Gordon studied the faces and positions through his scope. The shooter closest to Gordon’s position had a rocket-propelled grenade in addition to his Kalashnikov. Both weapons leaned on a rock to the fellow’s right. RPG was lighting a cigarette, his bearded face craggy, the eyes searching the shadows above a hawklike nose. His face indicated a lot of mileage: the Iran thing, probably. He was about the right age. RPG wore a gold chain around his neck with a crucifix on it. Probably not a Christian, though—at least, not in good standing. RPG was the back door. Gordon shifted the sight picture to the slope above the narrows. Of the two there, the younger one with the pale skin and delicate features, the tails of his gutrah folded over his head in anticipation of rising temperatures later in the day, he was the boss. He wore his ogal cool, cocked forward so that the front of the black band sat on his eyebrows. He was facing east and downhill, kneeling and touching his forehead to a cloth. Cool’s companion was older, more secular, less fashionable. He wore only the tagiyah on his head, the white cap pushed back, his falls of tangled black hair in his face. Incongruously, he was wearing a black and white Red Sox jacket over his thoub against the desert’s night chill. He squatted, his elbows resting upon his knees, waiting and listening. From a less connected family perhaps than Cool’s, and certainly a slob, but Red Sox was wired: the group technology geek. He was the sapper, the one with the remote. Red Sox controlled the front door. Below them among the rocks, growing impatient in the chilly shadows, RPG and the six other gunmen, all costumed as Bedouins, were talking among themselves, smoking, wandering behind outcroppings to relieve themselves, but always avoiding that narrowest point in the trail: the bend. That’s where, under Red Sox’s direction, they had installed the front door in the hours before sunrise. There had only been the one truck—running electric and silent in the dark—that had brought them and their explosive device. Nothing else had been in the vehicle. No provisions for hostages. Perhaps one Christian, one Muslim, and a few secularists. At least the murderers had figured out how to get along, mused Gordon. There was a crackle in his headset; Dr. Hussein speaking in Arabic: “Gordon, we have all the samples, equipment, supplies, and shelters packed. We should be ready to leave for Site Safar as soon as morning prayers and breakfast are concluded. Dr. Taleghani is anxious for us to return. Is the route clear?” “In a moment, Doctor,” replied Gordon quietly into his mouthpiece, also in Arabic. He felt a scorpion crawl across his hand but didn’t look away from his scope. “I’ll need Captain Mansouri at the head of the wadi in a couple of minutes. There will be something to report.” There was a slight hesitation. “Another ambush?” “Yes.” A note of frustration. “How do the devils find us?” “The sky is crowded with eyes, Doctor, and most of them are for rent. I’ll have the wadi clean in a minute.” “Wait.” Another pause. Gordon blinked his eyes and smiled slightly as he continued watching the gunmen below, knowing his academician boss needed to allow his eccentric compassion fantasy to run a bit before reality reined it in. “Gordon, might they be open to some—I don’t know—perhaps they might consider some sort of negotiation? We could pay them something for their trouble if they’d leave us alone. If Captain Mansouri’s men—” “There are nine shooters, Doctor,” interrupted Gordon. “Seven are armed with high-powered assault rifles, one in addition has an RPG. Another is controlling an explosive device planted at the bend in the first narrows. Their plan is to disable the first vehicle in the convoy, blocking the trail, then disable the last vehicle, trapping the convoy in between. Then the shooters attack the vehicles from both sides, killing everyone.” “Certainly we are worth more alive than dead.” “I don’t think they’re into comparative investments. These fellows are not hostage takers.” “You know this?” “They’ve made no provision for hostages: no food, no bindings. Only one truck.” The scorpion skittered off Gordon’s hand in pursuit of game of its own. “Five minutes, Doctor, and please have someone start up one of the heavy vehicles.” A final grudging pause. “Very well.” Twenty seconds later the sound of a four-ton all-terrain diesel started up far behind Gordon, the whine of the eight-wheeler’s starter motor and the clatter of the initial diesel exhaust reverberated loudly from the stubby hills at the edge of the crater across the plateau and into the wadi. On the slope above the narrows Cool wrapped up his prayers and spoke quickly into his handset. He gathered up the cloth he had been using, then he and Red Sox rushed behind a rocky outcropping and squatted. Suddenly everyone was in place, hidden on either side of the trail above the bend, safeties off, weapons aimed and ready, extra magazines within easy reach, and all as still as death. RPG was settled in a draw fifty meters up from the bend near where the rear vehicle should be when the convoy stopped. A very practiced crew: motionless, disciplined, professional, and therefore predictable. The four shooters on the near side of the trail would have the longest journey to get away from Gordon’s fire, the ones on the far side the shortest. Far side goes down first. Cool and Red Sox didn’t appear to have anything heavier than pistols with them. They had no place to go, in addition, but toward Gordon or up the slope toward a sheer cliff once the shooting started. Red Sox and Cool go down last. Noticing Gordon and trying to get away from his fire was only a remote possibility in any event. None of them should be able to hear any of Gordon’s shots. He was over a kilometer away. For the few seconds it would take to kill them all they would be momentarily deaf after Gordon triggered off their front door charge. Nine shots, possibly ten. Should only take five or eight seconds. Eight if he had to change clips to go for that tenth shot. Gordon’s Stryker M-3 semiautomatic sniper rifle had an eight-round magazine of 9mm magnum shattertips. He already had one round up the spout. An extra magazine was on the right of the sandbag he had filled that was cradling his left forearm as his hand held the forward grip of his M-3. Next to the mag, connected by a thin cable to the rifle, was a remote disrupter, looking very much like an early cell phone, its stub of an antenna pointed toward the wadi. He reached to the rifle’s electronic sight and turned on the recoil compensator. It would maintain his sight picture and aim between shots while the weapon’s gas mechanism automatically ejected a spent cartridge and chambered the next. Of the three shooters on the far side of the trail, the most difficult to hit would be the one in the center. Of all of them, Middle Man knew best how to hide. Ex-military or ex-terror vet. None of that Christian or Jihadi action for him; his god was terrain. It chose where he went, how he stood, and what he did. All that was visible of him was an edge of the right rear quadrant of his head. He was the one who might make that tenth shot necessary: the first round to get him exposed, the tenth—after Gordon had dispatched the others and changed magazines—to put Middle Man out of his misery. Gordon centered the sight’s kill dot on that spot, took a breath, let part of it out, and pressed the disruptor trigger on the rifle’s front hand grip. The charge down in the narrows exploded with a roar and Middle Man surprised Gordon momentarily by standing straight up in astonishment at the early detonation, exposing the upper third of his body. Nine shots and five seconds later the last echoes of the explosion still had not completely faded from the wadi. When they had, all was still down at the narrows. Gordon ejected the empty magazine and loaded the full one into his weapon, pulling the bolt to chamber the first round. He placed the safety on, emptied his sandbag, disconnected and pocketed the disrupter, collected and pocketed the ejected brass and the empty mag. Getting up into a squat he noted the black scorpion had crushed the beetle it had been after with its claws and was preparing to pick it apart. “Bon apétit,” he said to the insect as he duckwalked backwards from beneath the ledge, swishing the cloth of his emptied sandbag to remove the evidence of his passing. Once he was clear of the overhang, he stood, folded and pocketed the ochre-colored bag, slung his rifle, and c...
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