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In the end, they hadn’t taken much. Thellother ir clothes, a few toys, some family pictures. As they looked through the house, Tillman had found a metal container inside the open safe where some of their father’s guns were stored. Written neatly in black Magic Marker was a legend: FOR MY BOYS.
“You want to take it?” Gideon had said.
“Hell no,” Tillman growled.
Tillman hadn’t wanted to talk about their father, or to keep any material reminders of the man. Not even something their father had deemed worthy of placing in a separate box inside his safe and designating for his sons. So Gideon had taken the metal container with him, placing it inside one of the few cartons of books, photographs, and other small personal items. But for reasons he had only dimly understood, Gideon didn’t open the container. Not until many years later.
Gideon woke to a sharp crack. He sat up, heart pounding. For a moment he was disoriented. He had been dreaming about the box, the one with FOR MY BOYS written on the side. It was the only tangible legacy left to Gideon and Tillman by their father. And he’d awakened with a question in his mind, a question that he’d never resolved about what their father’s true legacy to his sons really was. Gideon was begi
It took another cracking sound before he realized the noise was gunfire. He tore his mind away from the dream. Now was not the time for gloomy speculation.
The first light of dawn was slipping through the thick jungle canopy. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the highlander who’d been acting as a sentry lying facedown about thirty feet away, blood pouring from his chest. The other highlanders were leaping to their feet, yelling at one another and scrambling for cover.
One of the men caught a burst in the leg and fell, his face twisted with shock and agony.
Gideon grabbed the fallen man’s spear and jumped behind the broad trunk of a tree. He could tell from the intensity of the sound that the shooters were no more than a hundred feet away. He peeked out from behind the tree. There was a fair amount of broad-leafed foliage between him and the shooters. But he managed to catch a glimpse of them.
They weren’t highlanders. So he figured they must belong to the same group of jihadis who had followed him up the river and up the cliff. He was astonished. What could possibly have motivated them to track him all the way up the river from Alun Jong, climb a thousand-foot cliff, and then pursue him half a day’s hike into the jungle?
His mind quickly moved from the speculative to the practical. How many of them were there? He was sure he’d killed all six of them during the landslide back on the cliff. There must have been others he hadn’t seen. He closed his eyes and listened.
Two. There were two guns firing at once.
The firing ceased. He looked around. The highlanders were all flattened against the trees. Including him, there were six men with spears. Against two with AK-47s. Gideon could hear them moving slowly forward, rustling in the underbrush.
A plan formed in his minrin‘€†d. He motioned to the other men, trying to communicate his plan with hand signals. He looked questioningly at the old highlander, wondering if his men understood. The older man nodded.
Gideon dropped to his belly and began wriggling forward under the cover of the underbrush, trying hard not to make a sound.
His idea was simple enough. There was a tree in front of him, right next to the trail. One of the highlanders needed to make a break for it down the trail, drawing the jihadis toward him. If Gideon stationed himself behind it and waited for the jihadis to pass by it, he could spear one of them.
Then it would be six on one. Six spears versus one AK. That was if the highlanders understood the plan and played their part.
He reached the tree, turned to look behind him. He could still see the old highlander. Gideon signaled that he was ready.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, suddenly, one of the highlanders leapt out from behind the tree and raced down the trail.
Gideon could hear the jihadis now. Footsteps pounding toward him. He watched one pass by, then the next. As he was preparing to step out and hurl the spear, another jihadi flashed by.
There were three of them.
He cursed himself for miscalculating, but it was too late to do anything about it. He stepped forward and hurled the spear. The third jihadi was no more than five feet from him when he released the missile. It was just like the game of Spartan that he’d played with Tillman all those years ago, the spear passing cleanly into the man’s body. Only this time he hit the jihadi dead center in the back. The spear must have severed his spinal cord, because he fell like a bag of wet sand.
Hearing the noise, the second jihadi turned. His eyes widened as he saw his comrade fall. He swiveled to fire at Gideon, who realized he had no choice except to dive straight at the man. Reacting to Gideon’s forward motion, the jihadi backed away and stumbled slightly.
It wasn’t enough to make him fall—just enough to keep him from bringing his gun around in time. Gideon grabbed the barrel with one hand, clamping the other on the stock just behind the receiver. The jihadi was a typical Mohanese—barely more than five foot three, probably a buck and a quarter soaking wet. He didn’t have much chance against a six-foot-one, two-hundred-pound American.
Gideon wrenched the gun out of the man’s hand in a sweeping motion, then reversed direction, swinging the stock backhanded. It co
He heard a scream, turned in time to see the third jihadi clawing at a spear. Three of the highlanders had thrown spears at him. One had missed, but two had found their target—one in the groin and one in the thigh. The man dropped his gun and tried to pull the spear out of his thigh.
The old man stepped calmly out from behind the tree, kicked the jihadi in the stomach, then jammed a third spear into him as the man doubled up. It entered the side of his neck and drove deep into his body.
The man fell to the ground, gurgling and moaning. The highlander who had missed his throw picked up his spear and stabbed the man in the back until he stopped moving.
The highlanders whooped loudly over the dead men, then began rifling through their clothing and packs. They collected a Swiss Army knife, several ammo clips, three wads of Mohanese currency, and three cardboard rectangles the size and shape of a passport. Each of the jihadis had been carrying one.
The old man’s eyes narrowed as he laid them on the ground and studied them. He looked up at Gideon, repeating a single word in an accusatory voice. “Look!” he seemed to be saying.
Gideon saw that they were photographs. He moved closer, and a chill ran up his spine.
The photos were of a smiling man wearing a white shirt, a necktie, a pinstriped suit coat with an American flag pin in the lapel. Printed in English at the bottom of each picture: SPECIAL U.S. ENVOY GIDEON DAVIS.
Gideon's War and Hard Target
This confirmed Gideon’s fear. It was no accident. These men...
But who had sent them? Islamist sympathizers within the Mohanese military working under General Prang? Unlikely. They would have sent locals who spoke Malay, and Gideon had heard these men speaking English. Plus, how could they even have known Gideon was in the country? The answer came to Gideon in the form of two chilling questions: Could it be Tillman? If it wasn’t him, who else could it be?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CAPTAIN AVERY TAYLOR HAD been waiting for three hours in the anteroom of the opulent offices of the commanding general of the Mohan Defense Forces when his phone rang. Captain Taylor was not an easy man to rattle. But when he found himself talking directly to General Ferry, the commander of SOCOM, he broke into a sweat.