Chapter 39

The wait lasted longer than I’d hoped. We ended up staying in our hides for almost forty-eight hours. The wait had gone on for so long, that I had begun to think that Lottie’s distress call hadn’t been heard. I was actually contemplating the thought of bugging out and heading home. I would have, if I hadn’t instinctively known that if someone did show up here after we’d pulled out, then the shit would undoubtedly hit the fan, once those people realized that the compound had been taken, and the Chinook was not here. At the very least the relief force would take a look about by air, probably catching Balto and his animal handlers out in the open. That thought kept me in place, and kept my men from complaining too much.

Amazingly we did pick up radio chatter before hearing the helicopter. The crew of the rescue helicopter tried to raise the compound staff to find out what their status was and if the Chinook was there. It gave me a few moments to call over to Burton and let him know to expect company. I used a throat mic and radio taken off the fire team from the Chinook. I kept the message short and sweet and once I’d transmitted it, I turned my radio off.

Ten minutes later the helicopter flew over our location, coming from the southwest. It slowed as it passed over the valley where the compound stood, and then the helicopter came to a stop, hovering in the air a couple of hundred feet up and a couple of hundred yards away from the compound. It hung there for a minute or two, as if the crew was debating what to do next, and then slowly the helicopter began to circle the compound moving from left to right. They were obviously checking it out.

I ended up holding my breath while the crew of the helicopter did this manoeuvre. I still had the man pack radio turned on and I was listening to it. The crew was reporting back to base, informing them that they’d arrived over the compound and that they’d found nothing there except the complex. The radio operator back at base had demanded a confirmation of what ‘nothing’ meant and the pilot had replied that there was no Chinook at the compound and no station personnel. He even stated that it looked like someone had stripped a couple of the containers of their exterior hardware such as the solar power arrays that should be mounted on top of the containers. When the radio operator asked if there was any sign of life in the area, the pilot stated that there were all kinds of tracks in the snow, running both north and south, and that there were skin tents and a burnt out fire pit situated in the compound’s courtyard. Beyond that, he hadn’t seen any sign of human life. Then the pilot asked for orders.

This was the critical moment and the point where my plan either came together or fell apart. I waited to hear the radio operator’s reply. The reply came through a couple of minutes later. To my pleasure the operator ordered the helicopter to land and to investigate the compound before proceeding on in search of the Chinook.

The rescue helicopter swung out over the open field as it began to descend for landing. It had snowed a bit since the Chinook had left, although not much; about an inch or two. Still the depression left by the larger helicopter was still quite visible and the pilot of the rescue helicopter aimed for that spot as he brought his aircraft down. It only took about a minute to accomplish. The helicopter landed almost in the same location, however with its nose pointed towards the compound. The moment the landing gear of the helicopter touched the ground, the side doors of the helicopter slid open and armed men started to bail out, dropping into the snow and crouching for a moment before rising up and moving out. To my surprise the moment the men were past the arc of the helicopter, the pilot throttled his machine up and he started to lift it off once again.

I couldn’t let that happen. The last thing I needed were ‘eyes in the sky’ and possibly an armed helicopter capable of retaliating once my men opened up on the ground troops. I reacted instinctively.

I popped up out of my hide and brought the M16 with the grenade launcher to bear. I slipped the HEAP round into the launcher, took aim, and I fired it. The weapon went ‘bang’ and the grenade flew directly towards the rising helicopter. A moment later it hit.

The grenade hit the tail of the copter just behind the passenger compartment. The impact rattled the craft for a second. Then the round detonated tearing the tail completely off. The explosion was definitely impressive. One minute the copter was about six feet off the ground and the next it was spinning out of control, swinging away from my position, and coming down hard amongst the troops that had just bailed out of it. Those men threw themselves to the side in an effort to save themselves.

I didn’t just stand there and watch as all this happened. I ejected the spent casing from the grenade launcher and then I grabbed a standard HE round and chambered it. This one I sent up and over the downed helicopter and into the centre of the armed men who were just then picking themselves up. The snow cushioned some of the resulting explosion when the grenade went off, however the grenade did add to the confusion of the moment, allowing my men to turn their weapons to bear in an effort to take the bastards down.

Burton had done the same as I had, dropping a HE grenade into the troops midst as they struggled to regain their feet and to see where they were taking fire from. It took the men by surprise and the blast cut one of the men down. By then my guys were on target with their carbines, and while the range was close to the effective range of the weapon, they were scoring hits, and their fire was keeping people down and in a state of confusion. That let me slip out of the hide and to move to another prepared firing position.

I moved down the tree-line and into a clump of young growth pines that stood near the edge of the field. Quickly I slipped underneath one of them, taking up a prone firing position. The low branches of the pine camouflaged me from view, while allowing me enough room to creep under them with my sniper rifle in hand, to set up shots against the opposition. I picked out the man I figured to be the team leader and I dropped him.

My shot startled everyone out in the field. By now the men were clustered about the downed copter. The helicopter’s engines were off and the rotors were slowly winding down. The men were spread out on both sides of the craft and they were now firing in the direction of our hide. My shot had dropped my target, tearing him open before his men’s eyes, as he was directing fire. Blood splattered everyone. As the men recoiled away from the dying man, I chambered another round and I picked myself another target.

My second target was the door gunner. The copter had a mount for a medium machine gun. The gunner had been knocked about when the copter had gone down, but now he’d pulled himself together well enough to put a burst of rounds towards my hide where Durt and Gort were hunkered down, firing at the other men. He didn’t get another shot off as I quickly aimed and took him out.

By that point what opposition the rescue force had been capable of mustering was crumbling. The copter had taken out at least one man when it had come down amongst the troops. My grenade had accounted for possibly one dead and I didn’t know how many wounded. Burton’s grenade had done basically the same. By now a few of those wounded were probably dead. My hunters’ fire had possibly mowed down a couple more and the two shots from my sniper rifle had definitely ended two men’s lives. In all I estimated six men already dead and an equal number wounded and probably dying. That had been the count of men who’d bailed out of the copter when it had originally touched down. It meant that besides the flight crew there wasn’t many people left returning fire. I naturally took advantage of it.

I rolled out from under the pine and moved quickly under another as a single solitary figure rose up out of the snow to fire at where I’d just been. Even as I took aim that figure was bowled over by a hail of bullets fired from Durt and Gort’s direction. One of them had dealt with the man. With no target left visible, I swept the area with my sniper scope, trying to pick out another possible target.

It was then that I noticed that someone had raised a white flag.

I was surprised. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. It wasn’t something that I’d expected someone from Quantum to do voluntarily. It was my bias, but I guess I viewed most of Quantum’s paid thugs in the same light as I had viewed Blackmore and company. That was my bad; particularly since as I realized that someone was trying to surrender, my people opened up on them again. I’d definitely missed something in their training.

“Hold your fire,” I shouted out loud at the top of my lungs, once I’d rolled out from under the tree where I’d been hiding, and as I scrambled to my feet. “They’re surrendering.”

It took me shouting twice to get my people to stop shooting towards the downed helicopter, and the people lying about it, and it took me a moment or two to signal Burton and his people to do the same. I actually had to walk down the tree-line a bit so that Burton could see me waving my arm in the air, letting him know I wanted to talk to him. We’d turned off our personal radios prior to the helicopter getting here and the only way of telling the other to turn theirs back on was to get their visual attention. Once Burton was on and chatting to me, I told him to hold his fire as well.

I walked back to my hide before heading out and seeing who was surrendering and just how many of the bad guys were left. I found both Durt and Gort hunkered down in our hide and all right. The burst of machine gun fire had torn up a few of the tree trunks that we’d lain down on top of our hide, spraying my hunters with splinters, but that was all that had happened. The hide was low and half hidden by the field of snow that was between three and four feet deep. They had gotten very lucky.

I strolled out after slinging my sniper rifle onto one shoulder, while grabbing my carbine from the other. Durt took the .50 from me, since I’d shown him how to use it, before. I left him to cover me. I did forewarn the young man not to shoot unless it was clearly obvious that the bad guy was going for a gun.

I walked out slowly, moving straight out into the centre of the field rather than directly towards the downed helicopter, keeping my distance for the time being. Moving to the centre of the field allowed me to stand at a point that gave me a view of both sides of the helicopter. Only when I could see both sides, did I even start to head towards the downed craft. As I headed in, I called out telling whoever was there, to show themselves, with their hands in the air.

I’d gone maybe twenty feet when the cockpit door opened on the pilot side and a person scrambled out. I paused and watched as he hit the ground, holding my carbine at the ready and pointed at the person. The moment the person hit the ground he put his hands into the air.

“Are there any more with you?” I shouted at the man.

The man looked back at the helicopter for a moment, seemingly speaking to someone still in the cockpit of the aircraft. A second later another person scrambled out of the craft. They were slightly smaller in size and shape, but similarly dressed. They put their hands up as well.

I stayed where I was for a moment and I glanced about. As I did, another person rose up on the far side of the helicopter towards the nose. They were also small in stature. That person threw away their webbing and holster and then they put their hands in the air as well.

“Move over with the pilot and co-pilot,” I shouted at the person who’d dug themselves out of the snow, “and don’t do anything stupid or you’ll all die.”

The person did as I told him to do, and moved over to where the pilot and co-pilot stood. They took their time though, hobbling a bit as they moved, obviously injured and possibly in pain.

“So one last chance,” I shouted out, glancing about once again. “Are there any more of you? If you don’t surrender now when you’ve got a chance, I’ll kill you when I find you. My men have this whole landing area covered with their weapons and if anyone thinks their going to bag me by playing possum they’re in for a big surprise. Now show yourself.”

The pilot and the co-pilot looked about nervously, gazing at the dead lying by their destroyed helicopter. Then they both started when another person got to their feet. This one moved slowly as well, favouring an arm and a leg.

“Get your hands in the air,” I shouted to the man.

“I can’t,” the man complained in response. “I’ve been hit and I can’t move my arm.”

I grunted at that. By then this person had joined the other three. I looked from one to the other for a moment and then I made my decision.

“Helmets off,” I yelled over to the group.

One by one the four got rid of their helmets. The two aircrew tossed theirs back into the cockpit of the helicopter. As I’d suspected, the pilot was male and the co-pilot was female. I then looked over the two wounded thugs. To my surprise, one of the two thugs was a woman. She had cropped hair and she looked to be Hispanic. I smiled at that and then turned my concentration back on the others.

“So is anyone else injured?” I asked pointedly, glancing from one to the other.

“I am,” the woman in combats stated when no one else spoke up. “I caught a bit of shrapnel in my leg. It hurts like hell.”

“Well ... we’ll take a look at you in a few minutes, once we get inside and out of the snow,” I murmured thoughtfully as I glanced at the woman for a second before turning my gaze back at to the others. “For now I need to tie you people up, so you don’t cause me any trouble.”

My statement didn’t make me any friends, but then again, I didn’t really care. I called Burton and I told him to send Tonko over with a few rawhide thongs so we could tie up the bad guys and move everyone inside out of the cold. He told me he would.

Tonko showed up a few minutes later. He laid his carbine down near me and then slowly approached the prisoners while I covered him with my weapon. As he walked towards them, I called out to them to turn and face the helicopter and to cooperate.

Tonko started with the co-pilot who’d ended up closest to us when everyone turned and faced the helicopter. He pulled one of her arms down behind her back and secured it with a strip of rawhide. As he grabbed for the woman’s other arm, shit hit the fan.

The pilot decided to be an idiot. As Tonko grabbed for the co-pilot’s other hand, the pilot grabbed for Tonko. The pilot was a big man, almost as tall and as broad as me. He caught Tonko’s left arm and with a deft move, had it pinned behind Tonko’s back before the young man could break free. As he did, the pilot came up with a weapon from out of somewhere. It was a snub-nosed revolver.

“Drop your weapon,” the pilot growled at me, “or the cave man dies, here and now. It’s your choice.”

I ignored the man’s demand, instead bringing my weapon up. Without a second’s thought, I squeezed off a three round burst into the man’s face. It took everyone by surprise, including the now dead pilot. The co-pilot shrieked and threw herself to the snow, trying to get out of my line of fire, and the other two, both gasped and stepped back in surprise and horror as bits of grey matter splattered them.

“Are you okay?” I asked Tonko as he lurched away from the man as the pilot fell dead on the ground.

“Yes, Jake,” Tonko stammered nervously in reply, gazing first at the dead man lying on the ground, and then at my smoking weapon.

“It’s okay, Tonko,” I said trying to reassure him. “The idiot didn’t think when he grabbed you. He was almost as tall as me. Even with him holding you in front of him, his head was exposed. Besides, I never negotiate with anyone who threatens my friends. I just shoot them dead.”

Tonko nodded his head in acknowledgement, although I could tell he was definitely thrown by what had just happened.

“Do you want to switch places?” I asked him when I noticed his hesitation to finish the job I’d given him. “You can cover me, and I’ll tie up these people.”

That suggestion snapped Tonko out of his state of shock. Drawing himself up, he shook his head, rejecting the offer. A few minutes later the three surviving prisoners were bound at the wrists, including the man shot in the arm. Once that was done, and Tonko had collected his weapon from where he’d left it, he helped march the prisoners to the compound.

I left Burton to clean up the mess with Bogdi, calling Durt and Gort in as I headed with the prisoners towards the compound. I would need their help once I got them there.

I ended up taking all three of the prisoners to the sickbay. The co-pilot, a woman called Heather Greene, wasn’t injured. I had Durt take her up to what was left of the hospital ward and watch her, while I dealt with the wounded.

I got lucky, there. The small Hispanic woman was the rescue team’s medic. While she’d been injured in the firefight, she was still up and functioning and more importantly, she had a complete medical pack with her. I sent Gort out to fetch it from where she’d dropped it in the snow. It would certainly come in handy, considering the fact that my men and I had only a few items in our kit that we carried to use as field bandages, and that was it.

“So what’s your name?” I asked the young woman as I helped her up on the examining table in the sickbay operating room. The table, the overhead lighting and a couple of rolling chairs were all that was really left in the place. I had the wounded man sitting on one of the chairs.

“Carmen ... Carmen Rodriguez,” the young woman told me, “and you needn’t worry about me. You should be taking care of Gus, first.”

“That might be so,” I told the woman bluntly, “but I’m not the medic. You are. I figure I’d take a quick look at your wounds first, while my young friend goes and gets your medical pack from where you dropped it. Then, if you’re not bleeding out, I’ll give you a pain killer and I’ll bandage up whatever might be bleeding so you can work on your buddy over there in the corner. Then once you’ve done your thing with him, I’ll get you back up on the table and you can talk me through any of the complicated parts of digging the shrapnel out of your leg. Now does that sound like a plan?”

Carmen agreed that it sounded like a great plan. I pulled out my skinning knife and I cut the leg of her combat pants away. She’d been hit in the left leg, in the thigh. The upper, outside part of her combat pants were stained with blood. Once I’d cut the pant leg free around her upper thigh, I slit it down to where it entered the top of her combat boot. At that point, I pulled the bloused leg of the pants out of the boot and tore it off, tossing it aside. I then did the same to the leg of her long underwear. Once her leg was exposed I gave it a quick look over.

“It looks like you got lucky, Carmen,” I told her after gazing at her exposed thigh for a moment or two. “I think you might have only picked up a couple of pieces of shrapnel, and from the look of it they didn’t go in too deep. You did however get sliced up a bit as well. Nothing serious I think, though it’ll take cleaning your wounds first before I can say for sure. If you’re lucky I’ll only have to put in a couple of stitches.”

“Is that so?” Carmen asked giving me a questioning look, her voice filled with a bit of skepticism. “Are you a qualified doctor?”

“Nope,” I admitted readily, flashing a smile at her as I did, “but my wife is, and she made me learn all about taking care of nasty bullet wounds and other injuries like that, including extracting shrapnel out of the leg of a pretty woman. I’m pretty sure I know what I’m talking about.”

At that point Gort came back into the sickbay toting Carmen’s medical pack. I took it from him, thanking him in common tongue, and then I gave him another job to do. I figured it wouldn’t take me long to deal with Carmen’s injuries, so while I was doing that, Gort could at least cut the man’s sleeve off his parka and then his combat shirt. It might speed things up, and at the same time, let us know if the man was actually slowly bleeding out. So far he looked okay, at least colour wise, but it wouldn’t hurt to check how badly he was injured.

The first thing I did was to search Carmen’s pack and find some Ibuprofen for her to take. I fed her a couple, her hands being still tied behind her back, and then I did the same for the male prisoner. I knew it wasn’t as good as a shot of morphine, but for now it would take the edge off whatever pain they were feeling. I’d let Carmen decide later if morphine was needed. For now I just helped them wash the tablets down with a drink from my canteen.

I went back to Carmen’s bag and I started rooting around. With her verbal assistance I quickly found everything I needed to look after her wounds. Once I had everything out of the pack and spread out on the counter top of the nearby table, I turned back to the woman, and I got to work.

I first washed the drying blood off of her. I cleaned her lower leg first just to make certain that there wasn’t anything there that I’d missed in my initial inspection. Besides a nick at the back of her calf that wasn’t much at all, her lower leg was uninjured. I then washed her thigh.

As I’d told her, Carmen had only two real wounds that needed digging around in and stitching up. The rest of her injuries were cuts that could easily be cleaned and then left to heal on their own, without any bandages.

“So do you want me to finish you off, now?” I asked Carmen once I’d cleaned all her wounds, “or do you want me to dress your thigh so you can take a look at your buddy Gus’s wounds?”

By now Gort had cut away Gus’s parka sleeve, and the sleeve of his combat shirt. His left arm was streaked with blood, most of which was dry, but some of it wasn’t, which meant that he was still bleeding, at least a little. At my question, Carmen looked over towards her teammate.

“How are you doing, Gus?” Carmen asked pointedly. “Can you hold out a bit longer or do you need my tender hands on you right now?”

“Nah,” Gus replied with a shrug of his shoulder, “I’m good for the moment, although I could use a stiff drink. You should get bandaged up first. Then you can concentrate on me.”

“You’re certain about that, Gus?” Carmen asked raising a questioning eyebrow as she did.

“Yeah, I’m sure, Carmen,” Gus replied with a wane smile. “I’ll be okay.”

At that Carmen turned back to me and told me to get to work so she could get to work. Before doing anything I had Gort give the man another drink of water to help replace any liquids lost. I then turned back to Carmen and I got to work.

Carmen helped guide me through giving her a ‘local’ to numb the pain in her thigh so I could dig around in her wounds and find the shrapnel that was still in her body. It didn’t take too long to do. Like I had told the young woman, she’d gotten lucky. Both pieces of shrapnel hadn’t entered too deeply and I was able to find them easily. I pulled them out, and the one piece of foreign matter that I could find. Then I started flushing the wounds out to make certain they were clean. After treating them with some antiseptics, I closed both wounds up with a couple of stitches. Carmen talked me through this as well, regardless of what I had told her earlier. Finally, I bandaged up her thigh.

“You did well,” the young woman told me as I started cleaning up my mess. “Are you certain you’re not a trained medic.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I chuckled in reply, “although I have done this shit before, under much more pressing conditions. Thankfully, there weren’t any bullets zipping overhead while I was treating you. Now if you can be good and I can trust you, I’ll let you treat your friend.”

Carmen’s faced darkened when I suggested that I couldn’t trust her. A flash of anger lit her eyes for a moment. I just stared her down as she fought to control the rage welling up in her.

“You can trust me,” Carmen finally said, glaring back at me. “I’m the one who surrendered. I won’t give you any trouble.”

“Good,” I told the young woman as I stepped behind her and I untied her wrists, “because I hate wasting time on idiots who can’t play by the rule book. If you surrender, you play nice, and you don’t piss me off. If you piss me off, I kill you. It’s that plain and simple.”

“Like you killed Hank?” Gus asked from where he was sitting.

“If Hank was the stupid pilot who pulled a gun on one of my men after surrendering; then, yes, just like Hank,” I said to Gus sternly. “So far you haven’t given me a reason to kill you, although that situation might change once I’ve had time to chat with you. If you’re an asshole that I can’t trust; well then, you’ll be a dead asshole. So far, in all of my contact with Quantum’s hired thugs, they’ve all turned out to be assholes. Think about that while Carmen works on you.”

By now Carmen had removed the rawhide bindings that were wrapped about her wrists. She’d taken a moment to rub them to get circulation back into them. Now she was shifting on the examination table in an effort to get off.

“Here,” I said offering her my hand, “let me help.”

Carmen looked at me as I helped her off the table and onto her feet. I was a good seven inches taller than she was, and I was definitely much heavier. Still I got the feeling the young woman was trying to size me up, in case things got violent down the road. After a second, she sighed softly as if coming to the conclusion that maybe she really didn’t want a piece of me. I let the matter lie, instead stepping away from her and turning my attention to Gus.

“All right then, it’s your turn to sit up here on the table,” I told the guy, stepping towards him as I did. “Just give me a second, and I’ll help you over and up on it. Okay?”

It was okay. Gus didn’t give me any grief. I helped him over to the table and up onto it, and then I helped him lie down so Carmen could work on him. By then Carmen had stripped off her parka and she’d rolled up the sleeves of her combat shirt. She was putting surgical gloves on by the time I had Gus settled.

I sent Gort off to check on Tonko upstairs, and then off to check on Burton. I also suggested that he get a pot of tea going over in the command post kitchen. That got me a bit of a look. While Gort was a hell of a lot more open minded about roles within our community, he was still a traditional when it came to cooking. He could grill meat over a fire, but in his mind, don’t ever ask him to make a meal. Even so, his little flare up vanished quickly. Regardless of what he felt, Gort knew that I would do the same for him and for anyone else in my community if it was needed, and I was the chief. He just nodded his understanding and he went off to do was I had asked.

“So you can speak to them?” Carmen asked as she got to work on Gus.

“Who are ‘them’?” I enquired curtly in reply.

The tone of my voice startled Carmen and Gus. Both looked at me and then they looked at each other. Finally Carmen bit her bottom lip and her face took on a look of regret.

“The locals,” Carmen stated in a hesitant voice. “We call them ‘them’ back at the base. They’re not looked upon kindly there by Winslow and his men.”

“Like you?” I asked in an accusatory manner.

“I guess,” Carmen admitted, her voice trailing off as she thought about it, “at least from your perspective. Personally, I’ve always considered myself just one of the working stiffs that Winslow brought through the Gateway with him, and not one of his followers.”

“Is there a difference?” I demanded to know, eyeing Carmen sternly as I questioned her. “I actually find that curious considering the way you looked at my friends. To me there isn’t much difference between you and those people you call Winslow’s followers, especially since it is clear to me that you look at the locals as chattel and not even human beings.”

“I guess not,” Carmen responded after giving it some thought. “Sorry.”

“So how many of ‘them’ have you killed?” I pressed on, not accepting her apology.

Carmen looked up at me with a start. Anger flashed across her face for a second until her eyes met my cold gaze. I held my gaze steady and eventually Carmen looked away.

“Does it really matter?” Carmen asked nervously. “From the sound of it, if I’ve killed one, then it might as well have been a thousand. You’ve already made up your mind about us.”

I looked at the woman carefully, but I didn’t do anything to acknowledge her comment. I simply stared at her until she went back to work on Gus. At that point Burton walked into the sickbay carrying a couple of mugs full of tea.

“Gort said to bring these over for you and Tonko,” Burton told me as he handed me one of the mugs of tea. “How’s it going here?”