It took him a moment or two to realize that the strange rocking sensation he was feeling was movement. The camper was actually in the process of being towed somewhere.
Wigans, considerably better dressed than he had been the last time Garrison had seen him, was standing over him grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh no,” Bloodshot moaned. He didn’t fancy being jump-started like his old ’64 Mustang again.
“Don’t worry. No need for car batteries this time,” Wigans reassured him.
The well-drilled need for situational awareness had Garrison scrutinizing his surroundings. The camper van had been turned into a mobile laboratory. He couldn’t have sworn to it but he was pretty sure that some of the tech there was salvaged from RST. He also noticed shelves of neatly stacked piles of cash.
“Welcome back,” Wigans said. “Good to see you. I took the liberty of making a few improvements to your... well, to you.” He seemed pleased with himself.
“Improvements?” Garrison asked. He was less sure that he liked the sound of this.
“That’s right. I added a little vroom. And a couple ba-ba-ba-ba. And some little viiiipt.”
Garrison stared at him. Wigans’s explanation had made so little sense Garrison suspected that he was still locked in some kind of malfunctioning simulation.
“Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of time to beta test everything before deployment.”
He really didn’t like the sound of that either. “What the hell are you talking about?” Garrison demanded.
“Sorry, I keep forgetting we discussed all this while you were, you know... dead. Deadish. Napping with no pulse.” Wigans looked extremely pleased with this last. Garrison was giving some consideration to beating a straight answer out of the man. “The three of us are about to embark on a little business venture.”
“The three of us?” It was all a bit much for someone so recently returned from the dead but Garrison was sure that he’d had enough of people making decisions on his behalf.
Wigans narrowly avoided being slapped hard by just smiling instead of answering Garrison’s question. The tech geek picked up a radio.
“He’s awake and he’s asking a lot of questions.”
Garrison gripped the bed as the camper came to a stop a little too quickly. Wigans grabbed a counter top but otherwise did not seem fazed by the somewhat erratic driving.
“She’s very nice, your lady friend,” Wigans told him. “If you see an in, perhaps you could inquire as to whether she has any friends. Or sisters. Or friends with sisters. Increase my odds a bit.”
Garrison just stared at Wigans. He decided it would be too cruel to tell the tech that he’d be better off sticking with internet pornography.
CHAPTER 51
Garrison stepped out of the camper onto a sparsely wooded headland overlooking the ocean. The air was cool, as though in the moments after a freshening rainstorm. He felt good. Not superhumanly mighty, or as though he had recently been put through a blender and had survived. Just good. Almost like a normal human.
It was another black G-wagon that pulled the camper. He smiled as he recognized the driver, a palpable sense of relief washing over him that she had survived. He wouldn’t be surprised if it had been her that had pulled him out of the burning tower. She was sitting on a bench at the edge of the headland looking out over the ocean at the rocky islands and promontories, shrouded in the dawn mist. Garrison walked over and stood by the bench.
KT turned to look at him.
“Do you remember anything?” she asked.
“Anything? That’s a little vague,” he said. Then half remembering something from one of his fragmented interactions with her, “Karina Tor...”
Her mouth curled into a frown as she playfully wagged a finger at him.
“Initials... K.T.”
Both of them were smiling now. He scanned the horizon. He saw nothing but ocean beyond the few islands.
“Where we headed?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” KT told him as she put a pair of hair sticks in her mouth and twisted her hair into a bun.
“Are you gonna be there?” he asked.
She pulled the hair sticks from her mouth and slid them into her hair before standing up to face him.
“Obviously,” she told him, sounding a little confused by the question.
Ray Garrison turned back to the horizon. The cool after-the-storm air smelled like possibility.
“All I need to hear.”
EPILOGUE
Eric sat at his workstation in the rebuilt ops center. He was listening to “Go With the Flow” by Stone Temple Pilots on his headphones. Up on the large central monitors Martin Lawrence and Will Smith were being put through their paces in the film Bad Boys.
Eric looked up at the screen. He was waiting for the shot he knew was coming. Lawrence and Smith rising into frame against a clear blue sky, the camera circling them. It was the hero shot, modern-day mythology at work.
Eric clicked his mouse, grabbing the image. Slotting it into the latest memory implant video, the latest simulation.
Eric didn’t see Harting at the ops center’s glass door staring at him with pure unadulterated contempt.
INTO THE FIRE
The Mediterranean Sea was only a few shades darker than the azure sky high above. The shadow of the HH-60H “Rescue Hawk” rippled over the water as it raced west toward Syria. The coast was a thin line of darkness on the horizon, bisecting sea and sky.
“There!” Sandeman, the copilot, said over internal comms.
KT could make out a sliver of gray smoke rising upward between the helicopter and the coast.
“Chief, give me the binoculars,” KT told Rodriguez. The senior chief handed them over. KT, wearing a wetsuit, leant out of the open hatch, salt wind stinging her exposed skin, the downdraft from the rotors buffeting her, and peered through the binoculars. She could make out wreckage floating on the ocean but the bulk of the missing Seahawk had already sunk. The wreckage pooled around several rocky outcrops sticking out of the sea. Nobody was sure what had happened to the helo. The pilot hadn’t even had time to radio in his position before they had been cut off. Their mothership, the USS Mark Twain, had used the downed helo’s transponder to provide rescue crew with the Seahawk’s final position. They hadn’t been told what the Seahawk had been doing but judging by where it had gone down KT guessed it had been ferrying special forces operators back from the mainland. This was disputed airspace, which was why the Rescue Hawk, unusually, was carrying a door-mounted M240 machine gun. The door gunner was a rifleman from the Twain’s marine contingent. PFC Thorrason was an incredibly shy eighteen-year-old from somewhere in Minnesota. So far he hadn’t been able to look KT in the eye and mumbled when he spoke to her, but he seemed like a good kid.
“We’ve got survivors,” KT said into her helmet mic. She could just about make out two figures in the water. It looked as though one was holding the other up, treading water with some difficulty near a piece of floating fuselage. What she couldn’t understand was why the survivors hadn’t clung onto one of the outcrops. It was, after all, a very calm sea. Still, being in open water would make it easier to get them in the basket.
“Where the hell did that come from?” she heard Huang shout over the clatter of the rotor blades. Despite being from Brooklyn the pilot was one of the most unflappable people KT had ever met, it was part of what made him such a good pilot. It was one of a number of reasons why KT had complete confidence in him. They had flown in some very heavy weather together, pulled some extremely risky jobs, and it was unusual for him to sound surprised by anything. She moved across the Rescue Hawk’s cabin and looked out the porthole on the other side of the helo. A black helicopter was flying low over the water about half a klick to the south. KT felt momentary concern at the thought that the black helo might have been responsible for shooting down the Seahawk before she recognised the other aircraft’s strange angular configuration. It was an MH-X Black Hawk. From the same
family of helos as their own Rescue Hawk and the downed Seahawk, the MH-X was fitted with engine shields, an extra main rotor blade that slowed the rotor speed down, making it quieter, and was coated in radar-absorbing material to make it far stealthier than the normal Black Hawk workhorse helo. It was the same type of helicopter that had transported SEAL Team 6 to the Abbottabad compound during Operation Neptune’s Shield when they had taken down Osama Bin Laden. If the Seahawk was, as she suspected, being used to ferry special forces operators around, then the MH-X would definitely be involved in some kind of covert op. The stealth helo was heading west, back toward the fleet.
“Thanks for the help, guys,” KT muttered under her breath. She knew she was being unfair. The MH-X wouldn’t have the gear to perform a rescue. They could have hung around to let the Seahawk survivors know they weren’t alone; such acts could be crucial to the morale of survivors in situations like this. For all KT knew, however, they may have been bingo fuel and she had no idea how important their mission had been. Despite the rationalizations, KT struggled with the idea that anything was more important than saving lives.
“AV gas!” Rodriguez shouted into his helmet mic. He was pointing out of the open hatch, down toward the sea.
You need to focus, KT admonished herself as she moved back across the cabin and looked out. Huang brought the chopper in to hover adjacent to the crash site, and the wash from the rotor blades rippled the water below. She had a good view of the survivors now. One of them was treading water, though with some difficulty as he was also supporting the second survivor, who appeared to be unconscious. It became apparent why they weren’t holding onto the rocky outcrop. They were in an island of blue water surrounded by a lake of inky aviation fuel. KT and Rodriguez exchanged a look.
“Try not to set fire to it,” she shouted over comms. Rodriguez just smiled. It didn’t really change anything, though she was pleased the survivors hadn’t used emergency flares to mark their position.
KT pulled off her helmet, pulled on her hood, mask, snorkel and fins as Rodriguez readied the basket. Huang brought the helo down to around twenty feet above the surface as KT sat on the edge of the cabin, her fins dangling over the rotor-churned water. She unclipped the safety harness and brought one hand up to hold her mask in place. Then she brought her legs up so they were straight in front of her and readied herself to push off.
Then a number of things happened at once. KT saw the fractal light of tracers shooting past, heard the rapid bass thudding of a heavy-caliber machine gun being fired, and had just a moment to see the gunboat coming around the largest rock outcrop before the sea caught fire as the aviation fuel ignited. The flames reached up to engulf the Rescue Hawk. The helo’s engine screamed as Huang yanked her up hard, banking to avoid the incoming bullets.
The deck became a slide and KT fell out of the cabin and into fire. She barely had a moment to feel the searing heat. She curled up into a ball, somehow having the presence of mind to keep a hold of her mask as she hit the water.
Rolling as she sank, she used the flames on the surface to orient herself. All was red and orange light. She did not have nearly as much air in her lungs as she would have liked. At the back of her mind she was vaguely thankful that she hadn’t hit the water fins first, the impact might have broken her toes; it was why they jumped in a sitting position, legs outstretched, fins perpendicular to the surface. If she was burned she couldn’t feel it. Looking around under the surface of the burning sea she couldn’t see any wreckage, so she was going to act as if the Rescue Hawk was still functional and just do her job. Glancing at her dive compass she oriented herself, guesstimated her position in relation to where she’d last seen the survivors and started to swim with long, powerful strokes that cut through the water under the flames. Ahead, as sunlight refracted through the water, she could make out the two survivors. The conscious one was kicking his legs for all he was worth, his free arm holding the hopefully unconscious second survivor above the water. The second survivor’s life vest was shredded, which was hard to do. Blood seeped from the conscious survivor’s free arm, which hung useless at his side. It was hard to tread water just using your feet, she had no idea how long he’d been doing it for but he had to be exhausted. It took KT a moment to assess all this as she approached them. She was also aware that her arm was starting to get hot.
“You’re on fire!” the conscious survivor cried as she surfaced in the only patch of water in the vicinity that wasn’t burning. She glanced at her arm. Some of the aviation fuel had stuck to her wetsuit and was burning. She smothered the little patch of flames with her dive gloves, feeling the heat as the padded neoprene started to melt.
She ducked under the water and checked the conscious survivor’s arm. There was a bone sticking out of it.
“Give him to me!” KT shouted when she surfaced again. She took the unconscious man, as she was better able to keep him above water with two arms and the help of her BCD. From his uniform he was aircrew, and he had a bad head wound that needed immediate attention, but was otherwise still alive. As she did so she became aware of the sounds of gunfire, the heavy machine gun being answered by the higher-pitched staccato of shy and retiring PFC Thorrason’s door gun. It was the first time she had ever performed a rescue during a gunfight.
The flames were creeping closer toward them, encroaching on their oasis. They were surrounded by black smoke.
“The rest of the crew and the other passenger are gone!” the conscious survivor told her. He looked exhausted, pain etched into his craggy face, but he was treading water more easily now that his uninjured arm was free. Special forces operators didn’t look like people thought they did. They weren’t huge muscle-bound guys, more often they were small, wiry men, like this one, sometimes running a little to fat (they claimed they needed the reserves).
“What’s your name?” she asked. Suddenly the smoke swirled around them as the Rescue Hawk flew overhead, tracer rounds flying past it, the M240 firing out of the hatch.
“Mike!” the operator told her.
She didn’t bother with the normal reassurances, he clearly knew how to act in difficult circumstances. “Okay Mike, I need you to listen to me. I’m going to tow him out,” she nodded at the unconscious air crewman in her arms, “under the fire and then come back for you. Do not try to swim out with that arm – even if you don’t get into trouble I won’t know where to come and find you.” And this was the crux point. Mike was a part of a fraternity of warriors taught to have total self-confidence in their own abilities because they needed it for the work they did. In his eyes she was a woman with a slight build. There was a question as to whether or not he would trust her. To her relief he just nodded. She didn’t need anyone’s approval but cooperation was always better than ego.
“The flames...” he told her. He looked beyond exhausted.
“If they come in you take in as much air as you can and you go under. I will find you.”
He nodded. He believed her. Then Mike looked at the crewman. Both of them knew that he would drown being towed underwater while unconscious. His chances were not good.
KT pulled out the waterproof radio on its lanyard and spoke into it. “RS1 to Papa, one coming out, meet me due west of our current position, one for the cage and then I’m coming back. Will need immediate resuscitation, over.”
“Papa to RS1, be advised we’re currently playing hide and seek with a gunboat,” Sandeman said over the radio, punctuated by the echo of gunfire. “Air support inbound, until then situation is precarious but will do what we can.” In the background she heard Thorrason shout the word “reloading.” “Over,” Sandeman finished.
Mike met her eyes.
“He needs to live,” he told her.
KT could feel the heat of the encroaching flames and the weight of the unconscious crewman. She nodded, not knowing if she was lying or not. She hyperventilated to purge as much CO2 as possible and then took a deep breath, adjusted her BCD and sank under the water, pulling the slack
body of the crewman down with her, and then she swam and swam and swam. Her arms were at her sides. She used her fins to propel her through the water as she towed the crewman behind her. Somewhere at the back of her mind she couldn’t help but acknowledge that from her perspective the burning sea looked quite beautiful.
Then she was out from under the flames, surfacing under a smoke-smudged but otherwise bright blue sky. The Rescue Hawk was waiting for her, basket down. The gunboat was nowhere in sight but it was still a risky move. She repaid them by striking out for the basket as quickly as she could.
One of the bullshit objections to female rescue swimmers was that their strength was not sufficient for them to hoist a two-hundred-pound man into the winch basket. There was a degree of woman-handling involved but KT knew it was all about technique, not strength. She got the air crewman into the basket and signalled Rodriguez, who was hanging out of the hatch looking down at her. He acknowledged her and started the winch. Almost the moment the basket left the water, Thorrason opened up with the M240 again. The gunboat emerged from the smoke, its heavy machine gun clattering, tracers filling the air, curving under the Rescue Hawk as the gunner tried to walk the rounds in from the unstable firing platform that was a moving boat. Huang, to his credit, held the helo in place, giving Rodriguez the chance to winch the basket up safely. The quiet teenager from Minnesota calmly triggered burst after burst from the M240, exchanging fire with the more heavily armed gunboat. KT couldn’t hang around to see how this ended. She had promised Mike that she would go back for him. She hyperventilated again, took another deep breath, and submerged.
The flames had consumed the clear water in the centre of the firestorm. There was just a moment of panic as KT came to a halt under the water. She wasn’t panicking about the flames, or her air, but rather about where Mike was. She saw the tendrils of blood first. They branched out from his compound-fractured arm into the water like the crimson roots of a tree. He was holding his breath, looking up at the flames. KT surged through the water toward him. He saw her coming and knew enough to go limp when she took hold of him and started to tow him through the water. She swam as fast as she could, the fins multiplying the power of her muscular legs as she kicked. It seemed to take forever but Mike didn’t panic, or resist, even when she felt that she needed to surface and breathe despite everything above her being fire.
Bloodshot--The Official Movie Novelization Page 21
