Tactics of Mistake Read Online Free PDF Page B

pulling the left window-space shutter closed overhead. They were left in a dim metal box with only a few narrow, sunlit apertures toward the front and around the armored section behind the driver’s seat.
    â€œYou armed, Colonel?” asked Eachan Khan, producing a flat, little, dart-thrower sidearm from under his tunic and beginning to screw a long sniper’s barrel onto it. Solid pellets from sporting guns—theoretically civilian weapons, but deadly enough at jungle ranges—were already beginning to whang and yowl off the armor plating of the car surrounding them.
    â€œNo,” said Cletus, grimly. The air was already close in the car and the smell of crushed grass and nutmeg was overwhelming.
    â€œPity,” said Eachan Khan. He finished screwing on the sniper barrel, poked its muzzle through one of the aperture cracks and squinted into the daylight. He fired—and a big, blond-bearded man in a camouflage suit came crashing out of the jungle wall on the far side of the road, to lie still.
    â€œThe bus will hear the firing as it comes up behind us,” said Mondar out of the dimness behind Cletus. “They’ll stop and phone ahead for help. A relief squad can get here by air in about fifteen minutes after Bakhalla hears about us.”
    â€œYes,” said Eachan Khan, calmly, and fired again. Another body, invisible this time, could be heard crashing down out of a tree to the ground below. “They might get here in time. Odd these guerrillas didn’t let us pass and wait for the bus in the first place. Bigger package, less protection, and more prizes inside… I’d keep my head down, Colonel.”
    This last sentence was directed at Cletus, who was heaving and wrenching in a fury at the shutter on the down side of the car. Half-propped off the road surface as the car was by the bulge of that same surface under it, opening the shutter gradually produced a space facing on the ditch. Into which the dead driver had pitched—a space large enough for Cletus to crawl out.
    The jungle-hidden riflemen became aware of what he was up to, and a fusillade of shots rang against the armored underside of the car—though, because of the narrow angle it made with the ground, none came through the opening Cletus had produced. Melissa, suddenly recognizing what was in his mind, caught at his arm as he started through the opening.
    â€œNo,” she said. “It’s no use! You can’t help the driver. He was killed when the mine went off—”
    â€œThe hell… with that…” panted Cletus, for a fire-fight did not encourage the best in manners. “The dally gun went with him when he fell.”
    Wrenching himself free of her grasp, he wriggled out from under the armored car, jumped to his feet and made a dash for the ditch where the body of the driver lay unseen. An explosion of shots from the surrounding jungle rang out, and he stumbled as he reached the ditch edge, tripped, spun about and plunged out of sight. Melissa gasped, for there was the sound of thrashing from the ditch, and then an arm was flung up into sight to quiver for a second and then hang there in plain view, reaching up like a last and desperate beckoning for help.
    In response, a single shot sounded from the jungle and a slug blew away half the hand and wrist. Blood spattered from it, but the hand was not withdrawn; and almost immediately the bleeding dwindled, with none of the steady spurt and flow that would have signaled a still-pumping, living heart behind it.
    Melissa shuddered, staring at the arm, and a shivering breath came from her. Glancing about for a minute, her father put his free hand for a moment on her shoulder.
    â€œEasy, girl,” he said. He squeezed her shoulder for a second and then was forced back to his loophole as a new burst of shots rang against the body of the car. “They’ll rush us—any minute now,” he muttered.
    Sitting cross-legged in