Cobra Strike Read Online Free

bought in a Pakistan marketplace for the equivalent of fifteen hundred dollars each. Baker and Winston’s pieces were
     battered, their mechanisms smooth from use. Turner’s rifle wasn’t any newer, but it hardly had been used. The poor fit of
     the gun’s components and the sloppy finish had not been worn easy through use. Turner had to file away burrs from the magazine
     well and from some of the magazines to enhance reloading speed. They checked their thirty-round detachable box magazines before
     moving out and pushed their 9mm SIG-Sauer P220 pistols in their belts. These pistols were made by a Swiss firm in Germany
     because of Switzerland’s strict arms export laws. They carried no American weapons, except for Turner’s Marine Corps combat
     knife, and they figured that this hardly constituted direct U.S. arms aid to the rebels.
    The animals went easy enough, head to tail, once they got them on the trail. Turner walked alongside the lead ass, Winston
     was rear guard, and Baker kept an eye on everything in between. The path zigzagged down the bare, rocky hillside from the
     fortifications. Turner periodically paused to check his map and compass, which wasn’t necessary, since there was only one
     path in a northwesterly direction, and the six beasts of burden plodded steadily along it as if they, at least, had no doubts
     about where they were going.
    They came down off the hill and followed the trail along the bottom of a valley where weeds grew high in what once had been
     small fields. There was no sign of life, only some crows or ravens that lifted off when they neared them,cawing loudly. The sun was high now in the blindingly blue sky and gleaming on the snows of the far-off peaks that they could
     glimpse occasionally from the valley bottom. When they saw a group of men some distance in front of them, Don Turner tried
     to slow the lead ass to a stop. The animal snapped at him with its large, yellow, chisel-shaped teeth and shouldered past
     him, followed by the five others.
    Don cocked his AK-47, ground his teeth, and yelled at the lead donkey, “If it didn’t take us so long to load you, ya skinful
     of shit, I’d drop you in your tracks. And the others are so stupid, they’d probably fall over you rather than stop.” He kicked
     a passing donkey in the rump. “This whole fucking mess is unbelievable. We don’t have to worry about no Russians—these jerk-off
     tribesman will waste us before any commies do.”
    Both Winston and Baker were surprised at Turner’s sudden verbosity. The donkeys plodded relentlessly onward. The other two
     men cocked their AK-47 rifles. Hanging by a strap from their right shoulders, the gun could be fired from the hip at split-second
     notice. Turner glanced back at the other two, and it was clear that he was as much concerned about being shot in the back
     by his less experienced buddies as he was by the unmoving group of Afghans ahead. When they came closer, they saw that Sayad
     Jan stood at the front of this group of nine or ten men and that to one side another man lay on the ground, covering them
     with a light machine gun. The gun’s barrel was raised on a bipod and was fed from a drum magazine beneath it, which might
     contain as much as seventy-five or a hundred rounds. It wasn’t going to be much of a shooting match, but Turner swore quietly
     that he would nail the son of a bitch behind the machine gun if it was the last thing he did, which it probably would be.
    The line of six loaded donkeys moved past the group of men along the path, but Sayad Jan stepped in the way of the three Americans.
     There as an uneasy standoff for a few seconds as the Afghans eyed the Americans and the three outgunned Americans tried to
     show that they could not be separated from their property so easily. Then Sayad Jan began speaking to them in an impassioned
     voice that rose and fell with his excitement. The Americans recognized thename Gul Daoud, but those were about the