by Mark Aitken
Unsheathing his Ka-bar, Winter hacked another hole in the alloy dome, pulling the blade down and across to create a triangle and a shooting point.
‘I want you up here,’ said Gallen. ‘Give me cover. I’m going to flank them from the left. When the shit starts, you come at ‘em from this side.’
‘No offence, boss,’ said Winter, ‘but you’re not well, and this is my line.’
‘You’re saying?’
‘I’m saying that I’d rather you cover me from up here. The way I can do this means we might keep the helo.’
Gallen took a breath, coughed out the cold air in a plume of steam. ‘Okay, Kenny, but tell Ford to stay with Florita, okay? And kill the lights. Let’s make these assholes work for it.’
~ * ~
The squall lifted for several seconds, revealing one man lying in the snow behind the long ridge. Raising the Heckler to his shoulder, Gallen was tempted to take the two-hundred-yard shot, but kept his finger along the trigger-guard. He wanted Winter to start the assault when he was good and ready. That way, they could take out the first two mercs and even up the odds for the remaining boogies.
He’d allowed Ford to open one of the side windows of the base, giving him a sweep of the rear of the demountable. It was going to bring the temperature of the base down dramatically, but they needed someone in the rear.
‘What the fuck are you waiting for?’ said Gallen to himself, checking the other peepholes and returning to the shooting point Winter had carved out.
Through the snow, lights cast an eerie path, sometimes hitting the snow in front of the base, other times diffusing into the endlessly dancing drift. Taking a breath, he aimed in the direction of the lights, now hearing the thump of rotors and the scream of a turbine engine. It was a helicopter, but whose?
Slowly the snow flew in a slightly different pattern and a huge yellow machine appeared out of the whiteness. It looked like a Cormorant CH-149, the search-and-rescue aircraft of the Canadian military.
Moving out of the dome, Gallen braced himself on the gantry as the snow and drift was driven into him by the rotor downwash, pushing the fur-lined hood back onto his shoulders. Lighting up the area with its floodlights, the helicopter depowered as Gallen looked for the mercs.
Carefully descending the ladder from the gantry, he hit the deep snow and waded to his right, around the back of the helicopter. Crouching behind a ridge, Gallen looked for the mercenary but could see nothing among the flurries.
Circling further around, shoulder-deep in drift, he almost ran into a mere—the third one, walking towards the helicopter in a snow bowl, oblivious to the intrusion. Gallen raised the Heckler and made a single chest-shot from the high ground then waded through the snow to the fallen mere.
Kneeling over him, he saw the eyes still fluttering and felt the Kevlar vest. The fallen man’s arm swung sideways, knocking the rifle out of Gallen’s wrist, making his arm flap. The mere’s knife arced upwards at his chest, slicing through the arctic parka as though it was paper.
Rolling away, Gallen went for the SIG on his waistband but the mere was too quick, coming at him with another knife strike, which Gallen fended by attacking the man’s wrist with the back of his forearm. The snow made it like fighting in mud and Gallen could see the mere was as tired as he was after only a few seconds of struggle.
Punching the mere hard in the left temple as he lost his balance, Gallen swung, driving a flat hand into his nose and then grabbing the man by the throat as he held the knife wrist with his other hand.
The man bled freely from the nostrils but he threw his knife hand under Gallen’s chin and hit him in the throat. Gasping slightly, Gallen felt the man slide from underneath him and tear his knife wrist free as Gallen was thrown on his back. Kicking out, Gallen got the mere in the jaw with his JB Goodhue, snapping the man’s neck back and stunning him. Pushing his attacker’s jaw, Gallen finally found his own Ka-bar and sliced down into the carotid artery, bleeding the man by the throat while shifting his hand to cover the mouth.
Crouching over the man as the last twitches jumped in his hips, Gallen looked around, panting for air and knee-deep in snow. His parka was in tatters up the front and he’d lost his rifle.
Kneeling, as the cold attacked his torso, he undid the mere’s jacket and put it on. It felt warm and as he zipped up he felt the wetness of blood on the collar. Checking the man’s Beretta 9mm handgun for loads before he put it in his waistband, he saw it had a full fifteen-shot magazine.
Crawling around, looking for the Heckler, he realised it was futile. There wasn’t enough light and they’d struggled over a large area. Seeing something sticking out of the snow, he waded to it and picked up what he hoped was the Heckler. Looking at it, his heart jumped: it was a Russian-made hand-held rocket launcher, of the type favoured by the jihadists in the north of Afghanistan.
If this was what they were armed with, what was the mission? Looking at the helicopter, whose rotors were almost stopped, Gallen saw it at once.
‘Get out,’ he screamed, wading towards the yellow beast and the rescuer in the red exposure suit.
The rescuer, who was wearing a full-face safety helmet, didn’t hear Gallen, and when his buddy joined him on the snow and looked away at CAM fifteen, he didn’t hear either.
Following them, with barely the energy to stand, Gallen tried to catch their attention, but they were walking to the building.
‘They’re gonna bomb it!’ he cried, but it was too late. The shrieking whoosh snaked through the snow storm and, missing the helicopter by inches, piled into the white dome at eighty mph, instantly turning it into a sphere of fire and debris.
~ * ~
CHAPTER 33
Gallen found the mere thirty feet from him, still kneeling from launching the rocket—he could smell the smoke from the tail. Pulling out his SIG, he waded towards the man as pieces of burning timber and steel rained into the snow, leaving deep hissing holes. Turning to look at Gallen, the mere raised his rifle but muzzle flashes erupted from the snow storm—from the other side of the bowl—and part of the mere’s head disintegrated.
Watching him sag to the red-splattered snow, Gallen crouched, waiting for the shooter. As Winter emerged from the flurries, a rocket launcher slung across his back, he eyed Gallen across the snow bowl and brought his Heckler to the sight-line.
Realising he was wearing the dead mere’s parka, Gallen shouted, ‘No! It’s me, Gerry!’ He waved his arms and Winter edged forward, the rifle not budging from its aim despite the blizzard conditions.
Gallen gingerly grabbed the front of his wolverine fur-lined hood and pulled it back, only to realise he had his black balaclava on underneath.
Heart pumping, waiting for the shot, he heard Winter’s voice. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Gerry,’ he said into a lull. ‘Gerry Gallen.’
As Winter approached, he could see blood up the Canadian’s right sleeve. ‘They’re packing rocket launchers,’ said Winter, heaving for breath.
‘We put down three?’
Winter nodded. ‘If you killed one to get that parka, that’s three. So we have maybe one more shooter and definitely a pilot.’
The search-and-rescue men in their red coveralls ran for the burning building, unaware that their helicopter had been the target.
‘We have to find that other chopper, boss,’ said Winter. ‘We can’t let them blow up our ride.’
Above the roar of the flames, the faint throb of a helicopter could be heard. It sounded as if it was everywhere at once.
‘You think the bird’s carrying rockets?’ said Gallen.
‘If they have another minigun, it’ll hardly matter about rockets.’
‘Let’s guard the helo,’ said Gallen, although his instinct was to race into the building, whose roof was starting to catch.
Handing over his Heckler, Winter started to speak but sagged into the snow before he could finish, hand clutched to his thigh.
Ducking to the ground as a bullet
sailed past his ear, Gallen pulled the Canadian down further into the snow bowl, his eyes scanning for a shooter. Cocking the Heckler, Gallen leaned over the prone shape of Winter, who was going into shock; blood drained into the snow, Winter’s moans soft but audible over the wind.
‘Our four o’clock,’ snarled Winter, fighting for consciousness as he pointed over the highest edge of the bowl. ‘One guy.’
‘Wait there,’ said Gallen, moving towards the ridge line, faint in the occasional moonlight, holding a good shoulder to the weapon. Swaying his hips into the thick layer of light drift that suddenly became heavy pack snow about two feet down, he kept his sights on the ridge as he moved forward, hoping surprise would be enough to get the first shot off.
Climbing the side of the bowl, the snow getting deeper and heavier, he felt the sweat running down his back and off his face, his weakened lungs fighting for every ounce of air.
Blinking the sweat off his left eyelid as he crested the edge of the bowl, Gallen was blinded by the search lights as they swept over him, so low that he lost his balance and fell backwards. As he dropped he saw the fourth shooter riding on the landing rails of the Little Bird, the minigun’s six barrels spinning under the cockpit in anticipation of firing. There was only one target in front of that deadly gun—the search-and-rescue Cormorant.
Locking eyes with the shooter, he watched the mere point and then the helo was swinging away from its intended quarry, banking steeply as it hooked back to finish Gallen and Winter. Lying on his back, Gallen shifted the Heckler & Koch G36 to full auto and waited for the helo to make a death-pass. He aimed at the shooter riding on the rails—Delta Force-style—and they shot at each other simultaneously, the bullets raining around Gallen’s body as he launched a magazine of 5.56mm loads.
Gallen held his finger on the trigger as the bird shrieked overhead, low enough that he could hear the shooter screaming with pain above the turbines and rotor.
Trying to turn in the snow, Gallen pushed himself onto an elbow as the helo banked again, its black bodywork looking ominous against the ever-changing dance of drift snow. The shooter now hung limply, one leg hooked over the landing rail, his broken body straining on the harness as his head lolled.
Seeing the minigun spin again as the bird swooped over, Gallen aimed up and felt the click of an empty magazine and the bolt retracting back, with no reason to hammer forward again.
He realised it was over for him and his team. In one strafe that minigun and its fifty-rounds-per-second firing rate could finish himself, Winter and the search-and-rescue Cormorant, before mopping up any of the survivors.
Waiting for the coup de grace, Gallen’s mind spun out a reel of memories, of hockey fights, of high school kisses, of bad combat and good horses. His mouth was slack and his lungs had passed their use-by date about five minutes into the wreck dive. He was screwed, and as he waited for the burst of orange from the minigun to chew him into a thousand pieces, he thought of the weirdest thing: Marcia had once told him that his stubbornness was both his weakness and his strength—that his complete inability to accept defeat was more suited to a special forces command than a suburban marriage.
And she was right.
Eyes focusing on that spinning gun, Gallen smiled and summoned his last breath. ‘Fuck you!’
A long streak of white and blue plumed through the half-light and then the air expanded in a super-heated ball of flame. Turning his face from the exploding black helicopter, Gallen faced the kneeling form of Kenny Winter, who promptly keeled over sideways as he dropped the empty rocket launcher.
Voices sounded through the deafening blast of the Little Bird exploding as a burning piece of fuselage landed six feet from Gallen’s head and the smell of av-gas soot permeated the atmosphere.
The two search-and-rescue guys in their red exposure suits waded down the side of the bowl in a panic, one of them waving a fire blanket—something Gallen hadn’t seen since bunker drills in Okinawa. He heard Ford’s Aussie twang instructing someone to roll and, looking around, he couldn’t see who the ocker was talking to.
As he felt sleep coming on—the soft snow like a featherbed— the search-and-rescue guy with the blanket finally reached him and dived at his legs.
He looked down to see what was happening. The last thing he saw was his pants on fire.
~ * ~
CHAPTER 34
The news segment on the wall-mounted TV continued its report on the death of Harry Durville but this time named the two pilots of the Challenger, and Donny McCann, showing a picture of the Marine when he was nineteen years old and topped with his USMC dress-lid.
Allowing himself a small smile at the old photo, Gallen noticed that four days after the airlift out of the snow the North American news media still didn’t have the full story on the two helicopters that had been sent to finish what the BlackBerry bomb had started. They didn’t even have a confirmed case of sabotage or terrorism. It smelled of an intelligence officer’s media management and he wondered who had done the managing and which organisation was calling the shots.
Clicking the off button on his remote, Gallen eased himself carefully onto his left foot, now strapped from below his knee to the edge of his toes. Angry purple colouring ran up his thigh above the strapping and on the other leg the purple down the side of his calf was peeled back, showing wet flesh, covered in what looked like Vaseline.
Hobbling to the window, he looked out on a plutey Calgary golf club from the third floor of Rockyview Hospital. His face had taken two stitches, and he was being driven to a dental surgeon in half an hour to have his broken teeth fixed. Running his tongue over the jagged stumps of the teeth he lost when the Challenger went down, he let his eyes scan the grounds of the enormous hospital, looking for people sitting in cars, watchers on park benches and white vans with too many aerials.
‘Sign the damn thing and let’s get out of here,’ came the man’s voice, and Gallen turned quickly to see Aaron crossing the floor to join him at the window.
‘I was about to,’ said Gallen, eyeing the insurer’s death and disability forms sitting on the table. ‘Just wanted to make sure Donny’s payout goes to his mom. He asked me specifically.’
Picking up the form with the McCann stickie on it, Aaron flipped through. ‘In the beneficiary box, it says “next of kin”. There a problem?’
‘No,’ said Gallen, looking at the green of the golf club’s fairways trying to poke through the patchy spring snow. ‘But he was married twice and he’s got a sister he don’t like. I wanted his momma’s name, so we can name her in the payout.’
Aaron lifted his phone from his pocket and turned away, issuing a command to an assistant to get the name of Donny McCann’s mother. He was tanned for Calgary in March and Gallen noticed he’d dropped his business shirt and suit in favour of jeans and a leather jacket.
‘How’re the legs?’ said Aaron, eyes scanning the hospital campus as instinctively as Gallen’s.
Sitting on the bed, Gallen stretched them in front of him. ‘Took the shrapnel out of my calf and the doctors are happy with it. The burns are going to heal, but they’ll always be ugly.’
‘Pity. Those were some gorgeous legs,’ said Aaron.
‘They were my best feature.’
Silence sat between them like a canyon as their smiles faded. Aaron’s face sagged, the real man glimpsing through. ‘I did what I could, Gerry.’
‘Maybe,’ said Gallen, keeping it light. ‘But someone didn’t.’
Aaron nodded, stepped back from the window. ‘When I saw you, I just happened to be standing by the fire blanket box. It was luck.’
Gallen was confused. ‘What?’
‘But shit, that thirty yards to get to you,’ said Aaron, shaking his head. ‘That was the longest thirty yards of my life. I couldn’t go any faster through that snow, honest to God.’
‘That was you?’
Aaron shrugged. ‘No one told you?’
‘I thought that was search-and-rescue.’
>
Gallen thought back to that night in the snow, looking down at his burning legs as the man in red leapt on them with the fire blanket, the flames taking ten seconds to smother, a bat of an eye in real life, but a marathon when your body’s going up in flames.
‘I was in Baker Lake when the call came through,’ said Aaron. ‘I’d been hassling them, ordering them to fly grids, and then Mike comes on the emergency channel and I suited up, went with them.’
‘Thanks,’ said Gallen. ‘You trained for that?’
‘I was in the Navy,’ said Aaron. ‘Bunker drills, fire blanket training. Years ago now, but the training stuck I guess.’
‘So,’ said Gallen, finally getting somewhere with Aaron. ‘You ONI?’
They stared at each other for several seconds. ‘We need to talk, Gerry, but not here.’
