Chapter 67

"Jack, you need to be strapped in securely. We are going to be in unknown territory and if I have to maneuver severely to avoid something I don't want you hurt as you flop around like a loose beach ball," she said.

I complied and we lifted off. It took only fifteen minutes to find the group. They did have two tanks and they were M1-A1 Abrams. The Comanche's radar found them and we could see their location plainly in the helmet's heads up display. We stayed a good distance off from them circling and looking. We saw there were two men, ostensibly on guard, patrolling in a lackadaisical manner.

I asked Brenda to approach closer and soon one of the men spotted us. He went into a small building and came out with something on his shoulder. We continued to approach, but to us we weren't in a threatening mode. We came in slowly and we even still had the gun stowed, so no armaments were showing on the Comanche.

This must not have registered with the guards. Both of them were together now and looking directly at us as we approached. The one with the weapon on his shoulder, Brenda thought it was a stinger, seemed to peer more closely into its sight.

"He's going to launch it Jack, I guess we'll get to see if this Comanche is all it's cracked up to be," Brenda said.

We stopped approaching and the guard didn't fire right away. I asked Brenda to back us off a little to see if that would help. She did and it did. We backed off about two thousand yards and he took the launcher off his shoulder while we hovered.

I didn't know what our next move should be. I wanted to talk to these men and wondered why they didn't want to at least talk. It put an ominous tone on things to me. I asked Brenda to move us closer again and see what happened. She took us up for a little more altitude - we were probably at about fifteen hundred feet when she started toward them slowly.

When he noticed we were approaching again he put the launcher to his shoulder and peered into the sight again. Brenda held us still and we discussed it.

"I just don't understand why he is threatening an apparently unarmed helicopter," I said.

"Maybe he is familiar with them and knows they can have stowed arms," she said.

"Maybe, but this is a big pain in the ass. I need to talk to them."

"Maybe he is just a bully and wants to shoot at someone," Brenda said, guessing.

"If that's the case I hope he isn't their leader. It would make things really difficult."

"If he's going to fire I wonder why he hasn't, I'm not complaining, but it does seem he would have already if he is going to," Brenda said.

"Maybe he just wants to warn us off."

"Maybe, or maybe that's an older missile with only heat seeking guidance and he can't get a lock tone from it," Brenda said.

"What are the chances of it hitting us if he fires it, and if it does hit us what shape will we be in?" I asked.

"I doubt he can hit us, I'm not sure he can't though. If it does hit us I wouldn't give shit for our chances. What do you want to do?" Brenda asked.

"Call jasmine and ask her how many Cobra's she can send to give us a little support. If there are more of us at least he will have to worry about more targets," I told Brenda, grimly.

She talked to Jasmine and soon six Cobras and six Apaches were headed our way. They were not nearly as quiet as we'd been. I could talk to them on the radio and I told them to spread out and approach in a diminishing circle, similarly to the approach we'd used in Waco for the bunker.

Brenda kept all her attention on the man with the launcher. It's a damned good thing she did. When the noise of the other approaching helicopters became apparent, his partner started a heated discussion with him. They argued for a minute or two and then he put his eye back to the sight and fired.

It was very thoughtful of Brenda to make sure I was strapped in tightly. When she saw the missile fire we shot straight up for about half a second and then we seemed to turn completely over and then fall back off to the left, as if we weren't flying at all. I braced myself for an explosion and tried my best not to puke.

It was over in just a few seconds. Brenda said the stinger was streaking happily away from us and hadn't even come close. The guard dropped the launcher and headed back to the small building.

"Put something in that building before he gets another one Brenda. I hope no one else is in there," I told her.

I had about half a second to look around the place and I noticed a couple of men coming out of one of the houses near here. Then I heard and saw the hellfire missile leave its firing rail which had appeared out of the fuselage.

It made an impressive noise and left a bright smoky trail behind it. I also felt and saw the turret gun deploy, and it was now pointing menacingly toward the people on the ground.

The hellfire made a hell of an explosion when it hit the little building. It converted the entire thing into a fireball at once and a loud fireball at that. All the people who were outside except the guard who fired on us hit the dirt on their faces. The guard was too close to the building for that. He hit the ground on his back about thirty feet away from where he'd been. He wasn't moving, but he did seem to be smoking a little.

The other helicopters had seen the stinger and then the hellfire and its explosion. They had dispensed with the slow approach at that time and were now surrounding the area. I saw one of the men on the ground look up and look around, and then he stood up and pulled off his T-shirt to wave it in the air.

I had Brenda stow the gun again as a gesture and I told her to set us down about three hundred yards from them. I'd brought a white flag with me hoping to use it. I stepped out of the Comanche and told Brenda to get back up. I was unarmed. I stood waiting for the flag waver to approach. He came up to me shortly.

"My name is Jack," I told him, extending my hand to shake.

"I'm Billy," He said, shaking my hand.

"We came here hoping to talk peacefully."

"Putting a rocket into our shed doesn't seem very peaceful."

"We fired on the shed because the guard had just fired a stinger at us and seemed to be heading for another one. If you want to talk peacefully we will, otherwise I'll send for a couple of hundred troops and kill you all. Your call."

"Did you need all these helicopters to talk peacefully?" he asked, but his tone had sure changed.

"We came alone at first, we only called for support when the guard began waving the first launcher at us. He fired the stinger when he heard the other helicopters coming I think," I told Billy.

"Why in the hell didn't he call someone else when you came up. He wasn't supposed to use the stingers unless we were being attacked. Did you approach him in a threatening manner?"

"We came in that Comanche with the gun and rockets stowed. We had no arms showing and when he first brought out the stinger we backed away, ask his partner for confirmation."

He said he would and left to do so. When he returned I asked if anyone was injured. He said Trey, the one who fired on us, seemed to be hurt badly. I asked if they had a doctor and he admitted they didn't. I offered to take Trey to our place for treatment and he agreed, saying he would probably die if he weren't tended to.

I waved Brenda back down. When she landed I asked her to call for Karen to come in a Huey to treat the wounded man. She got back up telling me she would. I guess Karen, Beverly, and Jana had been made ready already because they arrived in about ten minutes.

The Huey landed not far from the injured man. They had him strapped to a stretcher with an IV in his arm in just a couple of minutes. Three minutes later he was in the Huey and it lifted off. I turned back to Billy.

"We wanted to talk to you about six young women you took in. We also want to ask you to join our group."

"The women joined us."

"Twenty-four of their companions don't feel that way. I would like to talk with them, just to make sure."

"What if they don't want to talk to you?" He said in a decidedly obnoxious tone.

"If you want to keep those tanks another thirty minutes of so, I suggest you convince them to take the time," I told him and waved my arm in a semicircle toward the hovering helicopters.