Apache Dawn: Book I of the Wildfire Saga (36 page)

“Should we go hunting?” Mike said with his characteristic lopsided, gap-toothed grin.

“Negative,” Cooper said, glancing at the crowded crew area behind him.
 
“We’ve got to get the President the hell out of here.
 
Just keep an eye out for me.
 
Your new toy may come in handy if we need to clear the road.”

“Roger that,” said Mike.
 
He stood up into the turret again.
 
“Ready when you are.”

“Sparky, see if you can figure out comms.
 
We gotta re-establish contact with…someone.”

“On it.”

Cooper looked at his computer screens, showing everything in front of the APC through a video feed.
 
He could see there were armor plates blocking the actual driver’s window.
 
There was a solid, green light to the left of the armored plate.
 
He pushed the button next to it and the light went dark, while the metal shielding the arrow-slit of a window retracted and he could see straight-ahead.
   

“That’s better,” he said.
 
Even if it was just a tiny glimpse of the outside world, he wasn’t sure if he could successfully drive the massive vehicle looking down at a screen instead out a window.
 

Cooper grinned.
 
“All right…does anyone know how to drive this bitch?”

C
HAPTER
15

Glacier National Park, Montana.

South face of Mount Vaught.

C
HAD
WOKE
TO
THE
sound of thunder booming in his ears.
 
The world was warm and dark, punctuated by the flash of lightning and the ever-present, chest-rattling thump of thunder.
 
He figured the storm to be right on top of him.

“He’s coming to!” someone’s voice split the night.
 
Chad twitched, surprised.
 
He figured he was the only one out there on the vast grass-covered plains, watching the storm that night.
 
Strange
, he thought,
that voice sounds familiar.

More thunder.
 
“About time!
 
Get ‘im on his feet and cover the right flank!” said someone else.
 
The voice was close.

“Mr. Huntley, can you hear me?” asked the first voice, anxiously.
 
“I need you to wake up, sir!”

Chad screwed his eyes shut tight against the violence of the storm.
 
Even the ground was shaking now.
 
Then he felt the wind buffet his shoulders.
 
No, not the wind—someone was shaking him.

“Get up!
 
NOW!
” bellowed the second voice.
 
The shaking increased.
 
Chad felt a sudden flash of pain across his face and heard the sound of flesh striking flesh.

Chad opened his eyes to an unreal pain that threatened to force his eyeballs right out of his head.
 
He screamed something unintelligible, even to himself, and clutched bruised hands to his face.

A loud crash and a deafening boom tore the breath out of his lungs.
 
His chest clenched tight trying to pull in air on an exhale.
 
His lungs felt like they were on fire by the time the ringing in his ears stopped.
 
At last his chest relaxed and he could suck down a lungful of hot, smoke-filled air.

“What the hell is going on?” he heard himself half-scream.
 
He doubled over, coughing.

Someone laughed.
 
“You’ll be all right!
 
You’re a tough one, for a civvie, sir,” chuckled a blurry shape in front of Chad’s abused eyes.
 
“That was what we call
danger close
, sir.”
 
More ragged laughter flitted around him.

Screaming and thunder filled his head, threatening to shake his skull apart.
 
Above it all, smoke wafted over him, choking the air.
 
Something hard and cold was thrust into his hands.
 
“Here!” said the slowly coalescing shape in front of him.
 
He looked down through gritty eyelids to see the blurry shape of his rifle.
 

“Can you see?”

Chad blinked, watching flashes just at the edge of his peripheral vision flare up to the accompaniment of thunder.
 
“I think so…” he rubbed a grimy hand over his face and felt wetness on his palm.
 
His vision cleared and he could just make out a mixture of white and red covering his hand.
 
An overpowering cold suddenly swept over him.

Gunfire.
 
The thunder was gunfire.
 
Chad ducked instinctively as something exploded past his face.
 
He looked around.
 
He could see the Rangers that had accompanied him the night before all ducked down behind an expedient redoubt wall constructed of fallen logs, snow, and ice.
 
Bits of bark and snow rained down on them from the impact of a cascade of incoming rounds on the other side of their temporary protective wall.
 

The memories of his hunt-gone-south, the flight from the North Koreans, the Rangers herding him out of the Park…it all came rushing back to his tortured mind.
 
He was flooded with snippets of fear, adrenaline, excitement, and dread.
 
Floating over all of the swirled confusion in his mind was a frothy scum of the mystery flu, was the nuclear strike on Atlanta.
 
His hands started to shake.
 
It was like waking from a nightmare, only to find you were merely dreaming inside a dream and were still trapped in the nightmare.

“What the hell is going on?” Chad repeated, clutching his lever action rifle to his chest as he slammed his back against the redoubt wall in a cloud of snow.

“Ambush!” said Garza, the figure that had loomed in front of him as he regained consciousness was now clear as day.
 
He had blood smeared on his face and scarlet swatch on his white winter-camo.

“There’s a lot more of them out there than we thought!” barked Deuce on Chad’s other side.
 
He inched his way around the end of a log and let fly with a controlled burst from his M4.
 
In the distance, Chad heard a scream.

Chad could hear the rhythmic
whup-whup-whup
of a helicopter’s rotors cutting the air, despite the din of the firefight, the howling wind, and the screams of men on both sides.
 

He saw Captain Alston stand farther down the line to his left, braving a hail of enemy fire, and wave for the dark shadow in the sky to come down.
 
“Land already, dammit!” he roared.
 
“I’ve got wounded!”

“
Uh…Negative…we have new orders
−” Chad heard in his ear.
 

“New orders?
 
What the—get your ass down here before we’re all killed!”

“
Negative, Hammer—hey!
 
What’re you doing?
 
You know our orders—get that−
”
 

Chad heard some grunting and the sounds of a struggle over his headset.
 
He followed the big Black Hawk in the sky as it fought the wind.
 
The helicopter seemed to wobble and sway back and forth for a few seconds before a second of sharp static burst over his radio.

A sickening
smack
echoed down the line behind him.
 
Chad turned to see the body of one of the Rangers fall backwards and collapse into the snow, arms spread out wide.

“
Deacon’s hit!
” someone yelled, out of Chad’s line of sight.
 

Garza left Chad’s side in a flash, ignoring bullets that traced his movement.
 
He dove for his wounded comrade and struggled to get his gloves off and feel for a pulse.
 
He tensed, hunched over, and then slowly dropped his helmet down to his fallen brother.

“
Deacon’s gone, Cap.
”

“Goddammit
, you get that fucking bird on the ground
NOW
or so help me, I will shoot you down myself!” roared the Captain, turning back to the wildly gyrating aircraft a few hundred feet above them.
 
He ducked when the snow to his left exploded as a round buried itself in the white powder.

“Anvil!
 
Come in!
 
What the hell are you doing?” screamed Captain Alston.
 
A round clipped his shoulder and tumbled him into the snow.
 
He landed face first in the snow with a grunt.

“
They’re surrounding us!
” someone called out.

“
Cap’s hit!
”

“
Bastards!
” another voice called out, followed by a long blast from a rifle.

“Tuck, watch our six!” said Garza.

Chad saw the Captain struggle to get to his hands and knees and in the distance beyond, spotted a dark-clad figure move around a tree and raise a rifle.
 
He tried to yell and found his throat closed with fear.
 
He was deep in the middle of an honest-to-God battle and it seemed the North Koreans were no longer interested in just capturing him.

Across the meadow, Chad could see the enemy behind his tree, as he spotted Captain Alston, still on his hands and knees in the snow.
 
A bright red mist had been scattered all around where he had crashed into the snow.

Something clicked inside Chad’s bruised psyche.
 
Without thinking, Chad shouldered his well-worn Henry and racked the lever in one smooth motion.
 
The scope came to his eye just as he saw the North Korean soldier raise his own weapon.
 
Chad was just a split second faster and he knew it as he squeezed the trigger and felt the long gun buck against his shoulder.

The report from the .45-70 was incredibly loud compared to the sharper bark of the military rifles around him. When his vision cleared, the Korean soldier was on his back in the snow, one hand raised up in the air, clawing feebly at the wind.
 
The hand slowly fell into the red-stained powder and lay still.

“Oh my God…” Chad said, hands starting to shake.

Captain Alston turned, still on his hands and knees, and nodded at Chad.
 
In a hoarse, pain filled voice, he pleaded, eyes skyward: “Anvil…you gotta do something…”

After some static, a different, younger voice replied from the helicopter: “
Roger that, Hammer, I have the reigns now, so keep your heads down, ‘cause we’re gonna plow the road.
 
Danger close, boys!
”

Captain Alston drooped his head down.
 
With supreme effort he bellowed over the din of the battle, “Rangers, hit the deck!
 
Air support is danger close!”

“
Bring the pain, baby!
” replied Deuce.

The next thing Chad knew, Garza had tackled him.
 
“Keep your head down, sir!
 
This is gonna be nasty!”

“What—”

Chad’s question was cut short by the tremendous roar of a side-mounted mini-gun spewing fire and death from a hundred feet above them. Brass casings rained down on the Rangers through the snow as the sounds of the gun battle were quickly silenced by a throaty
bbrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaww
.
 

Chad lay buried under Garza but could just barely see the tongue of fire stretching from the side of the helicopter as it maneuvered along the line of battle and decimated the North Koreans.
 
It was the most awesome and terrifying display of raw power he had ever seen.
 

Time slowed down for Chad.
 
He could feel each heartbeat take what seemed like a minute as his mind processed the impossible scene.
 
His vision focused tightly on the helicopter.
 
He could see the snow gently swirling under the power of the helicopter’s rotors, the shiny brass casings tumbling through the air, the jet of fire and the
noise
…it was simply surreal.

In a few seconds, it was over and the mini-gun wound down, its roar now overshadowed by the helicopter’s rotors once more.
 
Time sped back up to normal and Garza rolled off Chad laughing.

“That was fucking
awesome!
 
Beautiful!”
 

“
Stand clear, Hammer 2, Anvil is putting down on your six.
 
IR shows negative tangos.
”

“Jesus!” said Deuce, peeking over the redoubt.
 
“Bodies everywhere…
look
at that, man,” he said, gasping with laughter.
 
“Blew the freakin’ trees apart like toothpicks!”