Precipice: V Plague Book 9 (9 page)

Katie drove
fast, nearly losing control of the Jeep and crashing several times due to the
tears in her eyes.  Rachel remained turned in her seat, watching out the
rear window until John was no longer visible.  But she could see the
helicopters and kept her eyes on the one that looked like it was circling the
area where they had left him.

She was
stunned at the turn of events, though as she thought about it and remembered
his refusal to take a seat on the train out of Nashville she wasn’t terribly
surprised.  When the helicopters were no longer visible she turned and
faced front, meeting Katie’s bloodshot eyes in the mirror.

“They’re not
coming after us,” Rachel said in a subdued voice.

As they
raced west the terrain quickly changed to rolling and fifteen minutes after
leaving John, Katie jammed on the brakes and screeched to a stop in the middle
of the road.  It was quiet in the Jeep for a few moments, the sound of the
idling engine all that broke the silence, then Katie began pounding on the steering
wheel and screaming her pain and frustration.

Rachel let
her vent, wrapping Dog into a hug and trying unsuccessfully to hold back the
tears.  He pressed into her, not understanding the cause of her pain but
instinctually wanting to provide comfort.  She buried her face in the
thick fur on the back of his neck and sobbed.

“I shouldn’t
have let him get out of the Jeep,” Katie said, sniffing back tears and wiping
her nose with her sleeve.  “He didn’t have to sacrifice himself for us.”

Rachel
lifted her head and looked at her but didn’t know what to say.  She felt
the same way.

“What do we
do?”  She asked after several minutes of quiet as they both gathered
themselves.

“I have no
idea,” Katie said, shifting the transmission into park and opening her door.

She stepped
out, not even noticing that the sun had made it below the horizon and dusk had
fallen.  The temperature was dropping, a breeze springing up out of the
north that brought the cold air from the mountains with it.  Brushing some
loose strands of hair out of her face, she moved to the cargo area and raised
the hatch, finding and digging through her husband’s pack.

Lighting one
of his cigarettes she turned and sat on the back bumper.  A moment later
Rachel and Dog joined her, Rachel taking one of the smokes and lighting up as
well.  She coughed when she inhaled the harsh smoke, but without the stiff
drink that she really wanted this was the best substitute.

“They’ll
kill him,” Katie said, no uncertainty in her tone.

“Why
wouldn’t they have just killed him right there?  From watching the helicopters,
I think they took him prisoner.”

“Back to
Moscow,” Katie said.  “Barinov will want to watch him die.”

She threw
her cigarette to the ground, the wind catching it and carrying it across the road. 
Tears began flowing again and Rachel turned and wrapped her arms around the
shorter woman.  They stood holding each other for a long time, struggling
to control their emotions as they thought about the death of the man they both
loved.

Neither knew
how long they remained like that, but when Dog growled they quickly moved apart
and looked around, dashing to retrieve their rifles from inside the
vehicle.  Dog kept growling, looking to the southeast, but even with the
night vision scopes on their rifles they couldn’t see any threats.

“We’d better
get moving,” Rachel said softly.

Katie nodded
and after they helped Dog into the back seat they climbed in the front and
continued moving west.  Within a mile the pavement ended.  The road
was now nothing more than dirt, but it had been recently bladed and wasn’t all
that rougher than the crumbling asphalt they had been driving on.

Pushing on
through the darkness, neither woman spoke.  They didn’t see any infected,
or for that matter any wildlife either.  The part of Idaho they were
crossing was desert, dry and windy and cold.  Not particularly hospitable
country.

“Do you know
where you’re going?”  Rachel asked after half an hour of driving across
the bleak landscape.

“I know we
go this way until we get into Oregon, then head for the coast.  The route
directions are in… oh, shit!”  Katie exclaimed, reaching across and
grabbing the phone charger dangling from the power port on the dash.

“What?”

“The sat
phone.  It’s in John’s pocket,” Katie said.

Both of them
stared dumbly at the charging cord for a moment.  After a bit she let it
drop to swing with the motion of the Jeep and put both hands back on the wheel.

“Do you
remember the route?”  Rachel asked a few minutes later.

“No,” Katie
said after thinking about it for a moment.  “And I’m not so sure I even
care about going to Seattle, now.”

“We can’t
give up,” Rachel said in a stern voice.

“What’s the
point?”

“The point
is your husband just sacrificed himself to the goddamn Russians so we could
live!  That’s the fucking point!  We are not going to dishonor him by
curling up in a ball and waiting to die.”

Katie looked
at Rachel, clearly seeing the anger flashing in her eyes.  Nodding, she
reached out and took Rachel’s hand, squeezing it hard.

“Thank you,”
she said.  “And I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit of a bitch.  You didn’t
deserve it.”

“Hey, if the
roles were reversed I probably would have shot you by now,” Rachel smiled to
let her know she was kidding.

They drove
in silence for another ten minutes, Katie braking to a stop when the road
forked.  Each direction appeared to be equally well maintained.

“Which
way?”  Katie asked, leaning forward and looking back and forth between the
two options.

“What’s the
name of the town?  Dick something?”

“Dickshooter,”
Katie laughed.  “John thought that was a great name for a town.”

“Which way
is Seattle from here?”  Rachel asked.

She was also
pushing forward in her seat to get a better view.  Dog was curious why
they had stopped and squirmed around until he got his head between their
seats.  Katie scratched his ears while they tried to decide which road to
take.

“That way,”
Katie said, pointing in the direction of the road that headed to the northwest.

“Let’s go,”
Rachel said.  Katie nodded and turned onto the new road. 

The terrain
didn’t change.  It was still the same gently rolling, bone-dry desert
they’d been driving through.  The wind was growing stronger, occasional
gusts rocking the Jeep on its suspension.  Rachel glanced at the
temperature readout, not surprised to see it was only in the high 40s outside
the warm cocoon of their vehicle.

Eventually
they entered an area defined by low hills.  The road, which had been
running mostly straight, began winding as it followed a path around the base of
each.  Both of them jumped and Dog whined when a large helicopter suddenly
appeared out of the darkness and flew over them at a very low altitude.

It had
approached from behind and until it was almost directly over the roof of the
Jeep they hadn’t heard the heavy rotor.  Passing over them it continued down
the road for a hundred yards before going into a hover and pivoting so that it
was facing them, hanging in the air no more than twenty feet above the
ground.  It was a Russian Mi-24.

Katie had
slammed on the brakes when it passed over and they sat staring in shock at the
massive machine that had so suddenly materialized out of the darkness. 
The brilliant LED lights mounted to the Jeeps front bumper lit up the helo and
they could see the pilots through the heavy windscreen.

“Fuck
this!”  Katie shouted, jamming the transmission into park.

She popped
her door open and jumped out, raising her rifle as she stepped away from the
Jeep.  Screaming, she targeted the cockpit and began pulling the trigger
in burst mode, quickly burning through a full magazine.  Rachel was
yelling at her to get back in the vehicle, but she either couldn’t hear her or
was beyond caring what happened.

The Hind
didn’t even bobble in the air, remaining rock solid in it’s hover while Katie
fired at it.  When she fired her last round it descended to the road and
gently touched down.  Magazine empty, she let the rifle drop to hang on
its sling and began walking forward, screaming at the top of her lungs as she
drew her pistol.  Rachel got out and ran after her.

Figures
could be seen climbing down from the troop compartment and Rachel’s steps
faltered when she saw them clearly in the Jeep’s lights.  Turning her
attention back to Katie she tackled her to the ground before she could get a
shot off with the pistol.

“We thought
you were dead,” Rachel said, throwing her arms around Colonel Crawford and
crushing him in an embrace.  He grinned, embarrassed by the display of raw
emotion. 

Rachel had
leapt to her feet and run forward to greet Crawford, Scott and Igor after
tackling Katie to the ground.  Katie still sat in the dirt in the middle
of the road, trying to reconcile what she was seeing with what she had expected
when the Russian helicopter had stopped them.

Dog worked
his way out of Rachel’s open door and limped forward, tail wagging when he
spotted Igor.  The big Spetsnaz soldier ran forward when he saw him
limping and dropped to his knees, gently stroking Dog’s head and softly
speaking to him in Russian.

Irina joined
them and she and Scott walked to Katie and helped her to her feet.  She
couldn’t speak at first, looking back and forth between them.

“John thinks
he killed you,” she blurted when she had regained some of her composure.

“Plenty of
time for that,” Crawford said as he walked up with Rachel at his side. 
“We need to get off this road and settled in for the night before a patrol
spots us and asks questions.”

He surveyed
Katie who was swaying slightly as she stood in the middle of the road, then
turned to Scott.

“Tech
Sergeant, get that vehicle off the road and concealed.  Ma’am,” he turned
back to Katie and extended his arm to escort her to the helicopter.

“The
Russians have John,” Katie said without moving.

“I’m aware,
but at the moment there’s nothing I can do.  They are patrolling the area
and we need to get out of here before we’re spotted.”

Katie nodded
and allowed him to take her arm and lead her to the helicopter.  Scott had
jumped into the driver’s seat and drove the Jeep closer to the Hind, turning
off the road into a dry wash and pushing it deep into some brush.  Igor,
who had already helped Dog board the helo, trotted up and collected the packs,
weapons and ammunition from the Jeep as Scott hacked dead branches off the
surrounding vegetation and used them to screen the vehicle from view.

“Where are
we going?”  Rachel asked when everyone was on board and Martinez lifted
them into the air. 

She gave
Johnnie Ray a quick look, but ignored him for the moment.  His hands and
ankles were restrained and he was strapped to a web sling seat against the far
wall of the compartment.  A wide strip of silver duct tape covered his
mouth and someone, probably Martinez, had drawn a big smile on it with a red
marker.

“Nampa
airport,” Crawford answered.  “That’s where we’ve been laying low for the
past two days.  We tried to catch up with you, but there were too many
patrols and we barely bluffed our way past a flight of fighter jets.”

“It’s a
suburb of Boise,” Scott offered when Rachel didn’t react to the name of the
town.  “We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“How do we
get John back?”  Katie moved to face the Colonel.

“Seattle,”
he answered.  “After they picked him up they took him to Mountain Home Air
Force Base and on a plane to Seattle.  Or that’s the plan.  We were
able to get that much over the Russian military radio in this bird.  They
aren’t talking about what they’re going to do with him after that, but I’m
willing to bet there’s a military transport plane that will take him to
Moscow.”

“If he’s
already on his way to Seattle, why are we going to Nampa?  There’s no
time.  We need to get to Seattle!”  Katie forced herself not to shout
at Crawford in her impatience.

“Fuel. 
We’re going to refuel and go.  Captain Martinez has already looked it up
and it’s four hundred air miles on to Seattle.  Three hours’ flight time
in this.  We’ll be there before the sun comes up.” 

What he
didn’t say was that the Russians had such a large head start that the Major
might be on his way to Moscow before they could reach Seattle.  At least
they knew the destination of the Gulf-stream was Boeing Field, south of
Seattle.  What they didn’t know was if John would be immediately loaded
for his final flight, or if the Russians would hold him on the ground for some
period of time.

Katie nodded
and settled back against a bulkhead.  Irina was sitting next to her and
gave her a smile.  Katie smiled weakly and closed her eyes, exhausted from
the emotions she’d been dealing with.

“Tell me,”
Rachel said to Crawford.  “How did you wind up with a Russian helicopter?”

He smiled
and began relaying the story, with help from Irina.  They told her about
their high speed flight to try and catch up with John and Katie, but having to
divert away from the southern portion of the Sawtooth Mountains because of
intense Russian patrol activity.

Because they
were in a stolen aircraft they didn’t have the current passwords and codes for
the transponder and had nearly been shot down.  Fortunately, Igor was able
to get on the radio and in his native tongue convince the patrol that they had
experienced an equipment failure.  Flaky hardware is endemic to the
Russian military and the lie wasn’t that much of a stretch for their challenger
to believe.

As soon as
was safe, Martinez had dropped to fifty feet above the ground and gotten them
to the closest airport that was outside the area of such intense interest to
the Russians.  For two days they’d sat hidden in a hangar, Igor and Irina
taking turns monitoring the radio.

They’d grown
concerned when the Russian presence in the mountains began to increase, then
before they knew it they were listening to a concerted ground search of Twin
Falls.  With sadness and horror, they had all gathered around as Irina
translated the communications as John had been run down, eventually
surrendering. 

There had
been a discussion between the AWACS plane and Colonel Grushkin about sending
one of the jets on CAP to destroy the fleeing Jeep, but the Colonel had ordered
them to allow it to continue unmolested.  As soon as they heard that, Crawford
decided they would risk a flight to intercept and rescue Katie and Rachel.

They had
waited for the Jeep to come closer to the area they were in, monitoring its
progress through routine updates being broadcast to Russian forces by the
AWACS.  Martinez had assured them that it wouldn’t be long before the
vehicle was outside the range of the surveillance aircraft, and the moment they
heard the radio operator declare it was no longer being tracked, they took off.

Then it was
Rachel’s turn to tell her story.  They all sat listening with rapt
attention as she talked. 

“Wolves? 
Really?”  Scott interrupted.  “I thought they’d all been wiped out
years ago.”

“So did I,”
Rachel smiled, then continued her story.

Martinez
asked a couple of questions over the intercom once she was done, then Rachel glanced
to where Katie sat with her eyes closed before speaking softly into her
headset’s microphone.

“Do you
really think we can get to Seattle in time, and get him back?”

Crawford and
Irina exchanged glances then he too cast a quick glance at Katie.

“We’re going
to try,” he said.