Cry Vengeance! Excerpt

When they were close enough to see the wall, Adam motioned the men to disperse. Each took his knife from its sheave and moved out through the undergrowth. Adam, Dee, Charlie and Mac moved to the highest point on their side of the compound, from where they could see the house over the wall. Adam slipped on the night vision goggles and looked around the compound. A large open front garage contained several vehicles, but the car wasn't there.

He looked at Dee, who had his goggles on, and held his hands up to indicate, "Now what?" Dee shook his head back and forth as Adam whispered into the small radio, "The target is not at home. Do not engage. Hold your position." He knew whoever was monitoring the radio for Harry would be listening in, and he really didn't like it. But there was no way to change the frequency of the radios to eliminate his listening. Although his team could transmit among themselves, the radios had been built from scratch to operate on just the one frequency.

Adam wasn't sure why, but he didn't like the idea. Ever since he figured out Buddy Larkin was a plant, some little thing kept trying to find its way to his conscious mind. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, and Adam thought maybe it was just a reaction to Harry putting a spy on his team.

He whispered to Dee, "We'll hang in for a couple hours to see if he shows. If he doesn't, we'll withdraw and come back tomorrow night." He had no sooner said it, than they heard the sound of a truck engine, and could barely see headlights bouncing along the road about a mile from their position.

"Maybe that's him."

"If it is, let's get him in his car. There's no sense killing innocent servants or family if we can avoid it."

"I'm ready, man." Dee raised his rocket rifle to his shoulder and flipped the invisible light beam on.

Adam asked in a loud whisper, "Ready with the launchers?" He got an affirmative from the other men. They were in a perfect position to see the vehicles as they came through the large iron gate below the house, to the right.

Dee had the rifle to his shoulder with the barrel resting across a small bush in the direction of the gate.

Adam said, "Be sure to let them all get inside before you fire." He could feel the elevation of adrenaline through his body as they waited for the vehicles to enter the compound. He whispered into the radio, "The target is arriving. We're going to take them out when they're inside the gate. Everyone head for the rendezvous as soon as the first vehicle is hit. Good luck."

It seemed an eternity before the vehicles approached the opening gate, apparently operated by remote control. The trailing truck was just inside when

They didn't wait to look at the damage they'd done, but retreated as quickly as possible. The night sky was brightly lit by the tremendous fire of the burning fuel tanks. Adam was once more thankful for the recent training, as they ran toward the rendezvous, some three miles distant. All the men arrived within five minutes of one another and they immediately moved out in the direction of the next target, jogging as quickly as the dense growth would allow.

As the sun came up, Adam figured they were at least twelve to thirteen miles from the Cuellar Villa. Everyone was worn out from moving through the rugged mountain terrain all night, and they stopped to eat and rest for the day.

Dee flopped down next to Adam and said, "Major, I don't think I could have gone another damn hundred paces."

"Pretty rough terrain, isn't it?"

"Yeah. You know, that was almost too easy back there. No guards or anything, like Harry said there'd be."

"You can bet your butt it won't be as easy next time. They'll be waiting for us now."

Dee barely heard his answer. He began snoring five seconds after Adam spoke.

Adam set up a guard rotation, lay on the ground with his pack as a pillow and fell asleep immediately, not awakening until late afternoon. He was ravenously hungry. All the running had sapped a lot of energy from his system.

As he ate a package of dried rations, Dee asked, "You think we got the bastard?"

"If he was in that car we got him."

"Holy shit, those rockets do a job, don't they?"

"They're pretty bad." Adam frowned, remembering the deadly little SAMS used against his choppers in Vietnam.

Dee didn't notice his frown and went right on talking. "Boy, I wish I'd had some of these in Nam. Why didn't I?"

"Probably didn't have them perfected yet."

"Man, I sure coulda used 'em.  They're bad shit!"