The Pit (The Bugging Out Series Book 4) (8 page)

“We’ve gotta cover that tree line!” Lorenzen shouted, unstrapping himself from the canvas bucket seat affixed to what was now the floor of the space.

I hung above him, still buckled in, still dazed by the horrific end to our short flight.

“Eric!”

It was Elaine. She stood below me, a trickle of blood on the side of her face. Other than that minor injury she seemed unhurt.

“I’m okay,” I said, convinced of that a few seconds later as I caught my breath and shook off the impact. “I’m good.”

I undid my belt and lowered myself down. Neil had recovered and was already gearing up. Everyone was, it seemed, no serious injuries or, thank God, fatalities, other than the cockpit crew. To call it a miracle might not be far from accurate, I thought.

“Westin, Enderson, on me,” Lorenzen shouted, his M4 ready as he led his men through the gaping rip in the fuselage. “Hart, give a check on everyone then bring up the rear.”

“You okay?” Hart asked, looking to me and Elaine and Neil.

We all gave him an assuring nod and he headed for the opening, Schiavo and Acosta approaching next.

“You smell that?” Schiavo asked.

We all did. A stark and pungent wave was scenting the air within what was left of the Sea Stallion.

“We have to get some supplies out,” I said, and Schiavo nodded.

“Fast,” Acosta suggested. “Before we all become crispy critters.”

That the helicopter hadn’t been engulfed in flames by the spilled fuel igniting was maybe another miracle. Or a testament to its toughness. In either case, the luck we were having might very well not last. We needed to get as much of what we’d brought onto the Sea Stallion back off, lest starvation be the next obstacle we’d be facing instead of Russians.

“Acosta and I will cover,” Schiavo said. “You three mule everything you can grab away from the chopper. Clear?”

It was. Schiavo and Acosta stepped through the opening and took up positions a few yards away from the capsized helicopter. I carried the first cases out with my pack on and AR slung at my side. Neil and Elaine matched my load. The three of us had almost all of the MREs and water bottles off when we heard a few quick bursts of gunfire from the woods to the west.

“Cover!” Schiavo ordered.

Acosta moved to the Sea Stallion’s shattered cockpit and crouched low there, focusing his attention to the west and south. Schiavo sprinted to the half demolished outbuilding near the lighthouse and covered the west and north. The actions were practiced and precise. We had no such connection with how Schiavo had drilled her troops, but we knew enough that to be useful we should be adding eyes and weaponry to where they were not.

“Lighthouse,” I said.

Neil nodded and took the lead, running to the side of the building with Elaine and me behind. When we reached the battle scarred south wall we positioned ourselves to cover the eastern side of the clearing. Then we waited.

It was likely a minute or two that passed, but the silence was palpable. The not knowing made the time drag.

“Quick boat trip and bring them home,” Neil said quietly, injecting what relief he could into the tense moment.

“What’s this, an added bonus?” Elaine wondered, joining in.

“Go to Alaska and fight Russians,” I said. “New state tourism slogan.”

The brief interlude of humor ended then, not with further violence, but with calm voices and familiar faces emerging from the woods behind us.

“One down,” Lorenzen reported.

Westin, Enderson, and Hart followed him as we all regrouped with Schiavo and Acosta near the stacks of supplies.

“That last burst of minigun fire was dead on,” Enderson said. “We just made sure he was down.”

“I think he was already wounded when he fired at the chopper,” Lorenzen said. “There was a blood trail.”

“He was alone?” Schiavo asked.

Lorenzen nodded.

“Where’s the radio?” Westin asked, eyeing what we’d salvaged.

Schiavo’s gaze widened.

“Get it,” she said, and Westin hurried back into the crashed chopper.

“If it’s...” Lorenzen began, apparently not needing to complete the worry.

“Yeah,” Schiavo said, nodding sharply, some self-directed anger working on her.

A moment later Westin emerged from the Sea Stallion with his rifle slung and his hands empty. He shook his head.

“Wonderful,” Schiavo said, turning away for a moment.

“What is it?” Elaine asked.

“Without the radio we’re deaf,” Lorenzen said. “If something’s happening where we’re heading, the garrison there might have reported it. But we’ll never hear that.”

“We could head right into an ambush,” Enderson said.

“We’re not really heading anywhere,” Neil said, gesturing to the Sea Stallion.

Schiavo turned to face us right then, looking very purposely at me, and Neil, and Elaine.

“Yes we are,” the lieutenant said.

T
he
Sandy
would carry us north. All of us. That decision was not agreed upon. It was imposed.

“I’m not saying we’d resist,” Neil told Schiavo. “I’m just saying you don’t have to use the terms you are.”

Requisitioning. That was what Schiavo had said. That she and her men were ‘requisitioning’ the fishing boat we’d brought north from Bandon. There was no asking. In essence, they were taking it.

“This isn’t a negotiation,” Schiavo said. “I have the authority to—”

“Don’t,” I interrupted her. “Don’t.”

“What?” she pressed me.

“You’re going to take the boat, fine,” I said. “But please don’t claim authority over it, or us.”

She stared at me for a moment, then that look turned to a glare.

“I let you on the chopper,” she said, her tone verging on anger. “I was going to get you to your people. Was that some kind of authority you were opposed to? Because if it was, and if what I’m doing now is, I also have the authority to leave you right here on this rock with a three day supply of food and water. That authority has been given to me as well when I encounter civilians who may impede my mission. So, if you are dissatisfied with me requisitioning your transport and
still
allowing you to come along, let’s decide real fast who’s on the boat, and who’s making Mary Island their new home.”

It was a calculated rant. And I suspected Schiavo regretted the tenacity with which she’d given it as soon as she’d finished.

But I had sparked the response from her. And I wanted her to understand the why and where of what might have seemed like defiance on my part.

“You don’t need to exert authority over us, Lieutenant Schiavo,” I said. “You didn’t come off that chopper and prone us out when you landed. You gave us consideration as civilians. As human beings. All I’m saying is you don’t need to revert to whatever position some bureaucrat with stars on their collar has given you. I’ve seen authority exerted since the blight, and it’s not pretty when all those on the receiving end of it want is that same kind of consideration we already know you’re capable of.”

I didn’t know if my words would stoke the sudden fire that had ignited her response, but I doubted they would, and I was right. She breathed, slow and shallow, absorbing what I’d said to her, and, if anything, a measure of calm seemed to come to her.

“Sergeant, have the men start getting these supplies onto the boat,” Schiavo said while looking directly at me.

Lorenzen knew what she wanted. Shifting the cases of water and MREs was a convenient necessity allowing the lieutenant to get all of her troops clear of the place where she stood with us. A few minutes later that was precisely what happened as her five subordinates carried the first load away from the lighthouse.

“Do you know what I did before this?” Schiavo asked. “Before the damn blight, do you know where I was stationed? What my job was?”

We waited, silent, no need to prompt the answer we knew was coming.

“I was a musician,” Schiavo said, a hint of a grin flashing. “I played piano in DC for get-togethers where Army brass and political types would dress up and dance and eat food I could only dream of where I grew up.”

I hadn’t seen that coming. I doubted Neil or Elaine had, either.

“Musician,” I said.

“Did my time before that in a logistics unit,” Schiavo said. “Before that I had two years of infantry. But somehow I sat down at a piano one day at an off base club, just to fool around, and some colonel heard me. And recognized me. And told his superiors I was being misused in logistics. Next thing I knew I was sitting at the ivories.”

She waited for commentary from us, but, to be honest, I had no idea what to say. Nor did I have any idea why she’d chosen this moment, after what had just transpired, to share this bit of her past. It certainly didn’t seem germane to what had just transpired.

“So you have a piano player issuing commands,” Schiavo said. “I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know I’m not some born to kill Army lifer out to piss vinegar in your direction for the hell of it. I’m a piano player who happened to be one of the few who stuck around to keep taking orders when everything went to hell. Eventually I was told to step away from the keys and grab my M4, so that’s what I did. Then I was on an Air Force transport that left me and others like me in Hawaii. And you know what we did there?”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t surf,” Neil said.

“We waited,” she said. “And were split up into units. Every lowly lieutenant was given their own command. Five hell raisers and a louie that played piano. That’s what my unit was. Then we trained. It was back to basic infantry. We didn’t even know what for, but I made a promise to myself right then that the person leading my men anywhere was not going to be the piano player—it was going to be the warrior.”

“That’s one hell of a personal narrative,” I said.

“I hoped you’d think so,” Schiavo said. “Because if I revert to the rulebook at times and seem like an a-hole, it’s because sometimes I’m afraid that I should still be playing piano. Okay?”

She’d used a term I hadn’t expected—afraid. Fear was a common emotion, even in those who wore the uniform and served their country. Cops felt it. Boxers in the ring knew it. Crabbers on a boat in stormy seas, as well. But rarely did they admit to it to virtual strangers.

Lieutenant Angela Schiavo, in her own way, was offering up an explanation as apology. And hoping that we would take it to heart.

“Fair enough,” I said.

Schiavo nodded.

“And I’ll try to remember that you haven’t been riding out this hell in some cushy civilian nirvana,” she said.

She needed to offer no more explanation. No more apology.

“We won’t share any of this with your men,” Elaine said.

Schiavo smiled lightly at the assurance.

“They know,” she said, then looked to the crashed Sea Stallion, worry and hope sharing the space in her gaze. “There’ll be a radio in Ketchikan. Every garrison has one.”

She looked back to us, those eyes filled only with certainty now.

“And we’ll get you to Skagway,” she added, pure promise about her as she spoke. “It’s still your boat, still your destination. We’re just borrowing it for a while along the way.”

And that was it. Some understanding had settled in between the lieutenant and us. As for myself, I fully appreciated what it was she was charged with accomplishing, and, along with that, the pressures to perform that weighed upon her. Despite any societal changes, she was a woman in a man’s army, evidenced by the makeup of the unit she led. I didn’t know if that disparity pushed her to work harder, or be harder, but, so far, it hadn’t exposed any deep flaw in her ability to lead.

And I hoped, for all our sakes, that it would not.

For the next hour we all pitched in, carrying what had been salvaged from the Sea Stallion down to the dock and loading it on the
Sandy
. She was heavier now, with both more supplies and more live bodies aboard, which, we discovered, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for a craft designed to operate with its tanks filled with caught fish. She rode more solid, I felt, as we pulled away from the dock and out into the channel.

Ketchikan was just twenty miles away.

I
t was good to have others to pilot the
Sandy
. And especially good to have someone, in Acosta, who actually had experience on similar craft. He steered us expertly along the eastern shore, islands to our west. He’d commented after taking the wheel that it felt little different from his uncle’s cod boat in his birth state of Massachusetts. That was the home he’d left behind when joining the Army shortly before the blight made its first appearance in a Polish potato field. Now, like the rest of us, it was the home he’d likely never know again.

There was another reason to appreciate having Acosta at the wheel, and the others to back him up. It gave us time. Elaine, Neil, and me. Time to sit on deck near the stern of the vessel and have a moment to talk. Away from any who might hear.

“What if there is a radio they can use in Ketchikan?”

Neil wondered that aloud, glancing toward the wheelhouse. Acosta was there, Lorenzen and Hart with him on watch. Schiavo, Westin, and Enderson were bunked out below, catching what rest they could before the sun rose.

“If they can make contact with some higher authority, what about what we found?” my friend asked. “And the notebook?”

“They could pass on what we learned,” Elaine said. “On how to beat the blight.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “They could.”

Neil and Elaine both puzzled at my wariness.

“But you don’t want them to,” Elaine said.

“We may have the holy grail here,” I said. “What if we get to Skagway and this evacuation isn’t as innocuous as the good lieutenant makes it sound?”

“Bargaining chip,” Neil said, understanding.

“If our people want out, and someone doesn’t want to allow that, then we have something to give them,” I said. “Or something to withhold.”

Elaine looked toward the wheelhouse, then back to us.

“You don’t trust them?”

“I don’t know them,” I said. “None of us do. I’m just not in the mood to blindly put my faith in someone because they wear a uniform.”