Foxbat by James Barrington Page B

One, take out their jeeps.’
    ‘Roger.’
    As Richter watched, Wallace unslung his sniper rifle, dropped into a prone position and rested
     the bipod on an almost flat rock in front of him. He paused for a few seconds, slowing his breathing as he took aim at the moving target still nearly a quarter of a mile away. Then the rifle
     kicked in his hands, the sound of it a flat slap in the desert night. Outside the gate, the front tyre on one of the jeeps suddenly exploded, the vehicle lurching to one side and stopping
     immediately. It was a hell of a shot in the circumstances.
    ‘Brilliant shot,’ Richter muttered.
    ‘I was aiming at the driver,’ Wallace confessed.
    At that moment the other sniper fired but missed: the bullet’s impact with a rock
     somewhere near the gates was clearly audible. The Algerian soldiers reacted immediately. Half a dozen of them moved forward to whatever cover they could find, and began loosing off shots from
     their Kalashnikov assault rifles towards the SAS troops. They weren’t aimed rounds, just supporting fire designed to make their unknown attackers keep their heads down. Behind them, the
     two remaining jeeps manoeuvred to the rear of the three-ton trucks and out of sight.
    ‘One down, two to go,’ Dekker muttered. Behind him, the two Land Rovers lurched to a
     halt side by side amid swirling dust. ‘Mount up and let’s get the hell out of here.’
    Inside thirty seconds, the two Pinkies were on the move again, the drivers pushing them as hard
     as they could which, without lights, wasn’t very fast. The terrain was rocky and uneven, strewn with boulders the size of small cars, which loomed up faster than Richter, for one, was
     comfortable about. But just as dangerous were the smaller rocks, any one of which could smash a sump or transmission housing, or burst a tyre. The drivers kept swerving violently from side to
     side, picking the best path they could through the tortured landscape.
    ‘We’re trading speed for invisibility,’ Dekker said, ‘but once
     we’re clear of this area we can use the headlights. And,’ he added, pointing east, where the first fingers of red and yellow grew visible against thedark blue
     of the sky, ‘it looks like the sun will be up in about thirty minutes.’
    At that moment two sets of headlights suddenly stabbed through the darkness towards them from
     behind. The Algerians had sent their two jeeps ahead in pursuit, and they were approaching fast. Like the SAS vehicles, they’d been driving without lights until confident they were
     getting near to their quarry, but now they were only about a hundred yards behind, and closing quickly. So the moment one of the escaping Land Rovers was briefly illuminated by the
     pursuers’ dancing headlamp beams, the shooting started.
    Dekker glanced back, and made the obvious decision. ‘Hit the lights,’ he ordered.
     ‘Now we need the speed, and let’s try to frighten them off.’
    Wallace stood up awkwardly in the bucking vehicle, and seized the grip of the Browning
     machine-gun. He took the best aim he could and loosed a short burst at their pursuers. Unsurprisingly, none of the bullets appeared to hit its target, but within seconds the headlights behind
     them started dropping back.
    ‘Good,’ Dekker muttered. ‘Now, if they’ll just stay out of our way until
     we reach the Herky-bird, we should be OK.’
    And then things seemed to happen in slow motion. As Richter glanced at the other Land Rover,
     only a few yards in front, its left-side front wheel bounced upwards, being deflected by a football-sized rock. That shouldn’t have been a problem, but at almost the same moment the
     right-side wheel dropped down into a pothole.
    The Pinky was already unbalanced, and this sudden lurch to the right completed the process. The
     Land Rover slewed inexorably sideways, the driver fighting for control. Then it toppled over, its right side smashing into the ground. Scattering men and equipment, it