"Got it." Moreau nodded, hating the little son of a bitch even more.
"Good," he said, turning back to Bates. "Okay, baby, we're gone."
[Chapter Seventeen]
Hugo Voorst was lying propped against a rock, his shoulder bandaged with white strips of gauze from the first-aid kit. Now that the flow of blood had been staunched, Marcel was injecting him with a shot of morphine to quell the looming pain. Happily the hit was clean, just a flesh wound and nothing serious, but he would be of no further use on the mission. Worse still, he actually had become a liability. The only thing to do was to leave him where he was, with an H&K machine pistol for protection, and proceed. You didn't like to abandon anybody, but . . .
Voorst, for his own part, mainly felt sheepish. Giddy though he was, the result of mild shock, his Dutch stoicism was still holding up. "I'll be all right," he was saying, a slow grin covering his face as the narcotic kicked in. "Sorry to be a party pooper."
"You got lucky," Hans soothed, checking the bandage one last time. "You get to take a little time off. But you may still have a chance to give us some backup if things get hot."
Armont had not said anything, leaving the kidding around to the younger men. They needed it to keep up their macho. The hard truth was, the whole operation was rapidly turning into a disaster of the first magnitude. Everything possible had gone wrong. And now he had no idea where Vance was. The situation had gone red, the odds deteriorating rapidly.