THE MADAGASCAR MATTER – Chapter Three

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Chapter Three

The Soviet-made RPG-7 had been around since the early 1960s and because the
damned thing was so cheap to manufacture and simultaneously rugged, they showed up
pretty much anywhere there was conflict. While I hadn’t heard that the Soviets and
Americans were conducting war-by-proxy here in Madagascar, we were certainly close
enough to mainland Africa for hundreds of the things to find their way across to the
island nation.

But that wasn’t my primary concern just then as I watched the blue-gray smoke
surround the grenade streaking toward the Range Rover. Wondering how we’d survive if
the thing impacted was.

Zero jerked the truck again and I had to fight to keep my balance. We weren’t
more than a hundred and fifty meters from the bad guys. My brain zipped through the
recent statistics I’d read about US Army tests on the RPG-7 and the probability of taking
a direct hit. At a hundred and fifty meters, the chances were about 75% that we’d get
nailed.

Not my kind of odds.

Zero tried to swerve again but the round stayed with us. They might have
switched from the usual optic and iron sights to passive infra-red, which would mean
much worse things for the three of us.

We shot closer to the turnoff point that Andrian wanted us to take. But Zero was
already shaking his head. We wouldn’t make-

-the RPG exploded off the right side of the vehicle and we went airborne…

© 2010 by Jon F. Merz All rights re­served

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