Cobra Strike Read Online Free Page A

only words spoken by Sayad Jan that they could understand. Every time the headman
     mentioned Gul Daoud, the leader to whom the Americans hoped to deliver the weapons, he contorted his face with disgust, sometimes
     spitting on the ground, and, soon after, tapped his own chest with an approving smile. It did not take a genius to understand
     that Sayad Jan had a low opinion of Gul Daoud and a high opinion of himself and that consequently there was no doubt in his
     mind as to which of them could put the weapons to best use. Meanwhile the asses had disappeared around a bend in the mountain
     path.
    “Looks like we just been relieved of our goods,” Winston summed up. “Only question now is do we want to fight about it, and
     I think they’re way ahead of us on that score too.”
    “Let’s go quietly,” Baker suggested.
    Turner wouldn’t budge. “These fucks ain’t going to walk all over me. If we let them do this to us easy, we’re not going to
     last long in these mountains. If we don’t get the weapons back, they have to give us something in payment for them. Maybe
     an armed escort to Gul Daoud.”
    Baker and Winston agreed, and Turner went into a long harangue with Sayad Jan, pointing repeatedly to armed tribesmen, to
     himself and to the other two Americans, then to the mountains in the northwest, shouting, “Gul Daoud, Gul Daoud. We need nine
     of your armed men to go with us to Gul Daoud, you mountain moron.” Sayad Jan either did not understand him or pretended not
     to, and yelled back at him, scowling or spitting every time he mentioned Gul Daoud’s name and tapping himself on the chest
     with his self-congratulatory smile.
    “This is probably something he can keep up for three days,” Baker warned Turner.
    “He’s going to have to,” Turner said, snarling. “The asses may be a hundred miles away by then, but he’s going to have to
     give me satisfaction for having taken them.”
    The other two watched in surprise as the usually silent Turner repeated his demands over and over, accompanied by increasingly
     vehement obscenities. Sayad Jan showed nosigns of relenting, though it was plain that he had to have understood the American’s demands by now. The two men were still
     shouting each other down when something like a huge invisible snake rustled across the rocky ground close to them, its trail
     marked by spurts of dust and the sudden whine of bullets ricocheting off stone. One of the tribesmen went down with three
     dime-size red holes in a straight line across his chest. Then, in the same instant, they heard the gunship and saw its door
     gunner lining them up for another cut. They threw themselves down as the machine gunner sewed another seam of bullets across
     the ground, this time curling up two of the Afghans into howling balls of agony, twisting and kicking in the dust.
    “Shithead commie,” Turner growled, and loosed off his AK-47, which he had been primed up to use at a half second’s notice,
     anyway.
    The door gunner’s head and shoulders flopped down over his weapon. They could see one of his arms hanging loose. By now the
     tribesman with the light machine gun had twisted it around. He sprayed the chopper. The pilot jerked his gunship up and down
     to evade the fire, maneuvering it from a side-on position to nose-on, in order to line up his rocket pods on them. But in
     turning to face them nose-on, the pilot exposed himself more fully to their fire. He desperately lost altitude in sudden drops
     and regained altitude in fast jumps to the left or right. The Russian gunship launched one rocket at them, a wild shot that
     exploded harmlessly a long way behind them. Then the Afghan’s light machine gun splintered the chopper’s plastic bubble into
     pieces on top of the pilot and copilot. This broke the Russian fly-boy’s nerve, and he lifted his machine out of harm’s way
     behind a massive shoulder of rock.
    Two more gunships appeared out of nowhere. Before they could