Wild Card

by Mark Henwick

  Dammit! Two bulls eyes! Third shot…and then it passed overhead, an angry roaring beast, visible only in that it blocked out the stars as it clawed itself up into the night sky with its head swinging and dipping, searching for the enemies that had blinded it. My wolfy eyes could see the heat coming off it like smoke in the cold air.

  I threw the blanket aside and hefted the laser comms system. Maybe if they turned this way...

  Bian’s motorbike came racing out of the night. The tires shrieked protest as she skidded to a stop beside me.

  I jumped on behind her, slotted the laser into the saddlebags and grabbed hold. “Go, go, go.”

  Bian redlined the big Kawasaki. We roared off along the midnight road, footless gray ghosts fleeing the anger of the blind eagle.

  “And…mark,” the colonel said in my ear. “Going dark.”

  About eight miles ahead of us, the colonel had turned off his lights and swung right onto a dirt track. His speed would drop to about thirty and he’d start counting and hope the coyotes weren’t out on the road. As long as he kept the car straight there wasn’t much else to hit. In five minutes he’d stop and wait for…

  “Inbound, ETA ten.” Victor’s gravelly voice, with the thudding of Jen’s helicopter as background.

  Victor had a nightscope as well. The colonel would pop the hood on his car and he should light up like a burning oil rig on the IR scope.

  Time for the second pinch point. The Apache had a radar system. In standard battlefield mode they kept it shut down to stop missiles from locking on to it. If the pilot got over his unexpected IR system problems and decided to fly on radar, he’d see Jen’s Bell 407 helicopter, the colonel’s car and our motorbike. And one flicked switch later his weapons system would acquire targets. I had hopes that a $60,000 Hellfire missile wouldn’t regard the ass end of a motorbike as a suitable target, but I didn’t want to find out and that wasn’t going to help the colonel and Victor anyway.

  So he could find targets. And then what would he do?

  He wasn’t a Naga. He hadn’t signed on to blow away cars and civilian helicopters in the cold, high plains of Colorado.

  I hope.

  “Colonel’s here at the meet point.” David’s voice on the comm. “I can see your headlight, but there’s no sign of pursuit from south.”

  “Also clear to the north,” Tom’s voice followed.

  “Going dark,” Bian said.

  The headlight died, and we had a minute slowing down along the blacktop as Bian’s Athanate vision adjusted, then we turned and chased after the colonel’s car along the dirt track. I could taste the dust in the air, thickening quickly as we overhauled him. Bian’s eyesight allowed us to travel much faster than the colonel.

  The TacNet had cleared from the confusion of pursuit cars calling out their positions.

  It was down to the Apache. Bravo wasn’t talking at the moment—the Naga was probably reporting up the chain of command.

  “Eagle on the ground. Checking systems. Back to you in fifteen.” The Apache had landed.

  Silence on the TacNet. The Apache crew would be running their onboard diagnostics. I wasn’t an expert, but I was betting it would take them a while to figure out I’d burned out their IR sensors with a laser.

  “I see the colonel’s car. ETA five.” Victor.

  He was coming in to land. We’d be loaded and gone before the Apache got off the ground, but how far?

  “ETA two,” Bian confirmed our position.

  I pictured the immense country around us. Miles of flat fields and darkness crossed by scores of roads running at right angles to each other. For all the noise on the comms, they couldn’t have more than a dozen cars patrolling this area. We were like a needle in a haystack while that Apache was down.

  Bian slowed and we coasted alongside the colonel’s car. I swung off as soon as Bian stopped, and slung the saddlebags with AdAstra Communications’ expensive satellite comms system over my shoulder.

  “I have headlights north of us.” Tom’s voice was calm, but it still shattered my premature wind-down. “I’m holding position.”

  At this time of night, it was vanishingly unlikely that was a farmer heading home. Of all the miserable luck, one of the Nagas had decided to take this dirt road to get down to 52. Tom could see a long way and we had a little time yet.

  It depended on how fast the Naga was going.

  “Shit.” Bian fired up the Kawasaki again and had its tail snaking in the dirt as she took off toward Tom.

  I caught a glimpse of the headlights Tom had reported just as Victor brought the Bell in to land, flying without lights and relying on his helmet IR system. Dust billowed and whipped around us as he drifted closer. I guessed Victor had to be flying blind now, feeling for the ground through the cloud he was kicking up.

  “Bravo, Pursuit 6,” said the comms system. “We just crossed with Pursuit 9 on 52. He must have turned off.”

  Crap, they had been too close. And now they knew we were on a side road. The next call would pinpoint us.

  “Your flight is boarding now, people,” Victor growled, as the Bell settled. “Watch your heads.”

  “Bravo, Pursuit 7 on uh…County 13. I have visual with some disturbance. Lights and dust. Just checking…oh, shit. I can hear a helicopter.”

  The colonel scurried forward, his arm around Vera and their heads bent low.

  “He’s shooting, people. Hurry it up,” Tom called from outside the dust cloud.

  The guy had to be shooting blind. He couldn’t see anything, but luck wasn’t running our way tonight. One bullet in the wrong place…

  Then Tom’s voice again. “Bian’s on it.”

  “Tom, Bian,” I called. “Leave it. Come in now. Time to go.”

  Vera stumbled on the uneven ground and fell. Immediately, David was there. He and the colonel lifted her into the Bell.

  They climbed in quickly. David took the bulky laser from me and strapped it down. I stood in the door. Victor had the blades spun up to takeoff speed again. I could feel the Bell straining to lift.

  “Done.” Tom spoke from somewhere in the night.

  “Forget them. Come on, come on,” I called again.

  The Kawasaki seemed to leap out of the night suddenly, screaming like an enraged puma. Bian slammed the back brakes and it slewed around, throwing up even more dirt into the cauldron of dust around us. She and Tom jumped off and let the bike slide away.

  “Go, go, go,” I yelled, shoving them inside.

  I followed them through, falling into the cramped compartment as the Bell immediately snatched up its tail and swiveled to face east.

  And in the confused, jumbled darkness, I could smell blood.

  I twisted to my right. I was shoved up against Bian’s back, the hard casing of her katana’s sheath pressing against my shoulder. There was some blood there. Not Bian’s or Tom’s. That was fine. If there were a couple of headless Nagas back there, so much the better.

  I twisted the other way.

  Vera had fallen from the seat where David had lifted her. The colonel was on the other side of her. His face was blank with shock and he was cradling her in his arms, his hands touching her, searching blindly.

  I tore the comms set off and knelt over her. I could see what he couldn’t.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said hoarsely. “I seem to have got myself hit.”

  Chapter 29

  I’d healed people before. I’d healed Jen when she was badly hurt. But I’d messed up her head and mine when I did it.

  My brain was wavering but my hands were working automatically. First things first. Stop the bleeding. Tear the clothes. Open the first aid box. Compression. Bandages. The colonel was working with me, by touch. All the time I felt sick inside that I was just about to make things worse.

  Bian was beside me.

  “Please, Bian,” I said.

  She sensed what I meant. “You’ve done it before, Amber.”

  “I made a mistake—”

 
“You healed Jen.”

  The colonel was trying to see us in the blackness. He couldn’t even hear what we were saying over the noise, but he could feel my uncertainty as my hands fumbled the last bandage. He’d be frantic now—he’d seen wounds bleed like this before. Vera didn’t have long. We were miles from any hospital and even if we got her to one, we’d set ourselves up as stationary targets for the Nagas. They’d be looking.

  The colonel knew Athanate healed themselves, but he didn’t know about Athanate healing others.

  Bian’s hands ran over the bandage, noting the entry and exit position of the wound. She knew how much blood had been lost.

  “No,” Bian said. “You’re right, you can’t do that. It’s arterial. I’ve got to work directly with the circulatory system.” She grabbed me and started to push me out of the way, but she paused. “I’m going against Skylur’s orders. Your account—you deal with him. And you owe me big time, Round-eye.”

  A hundred arguments flared in my brain. Skylur’s last orders on this were that I had to be responsible for healing my House. Vera wasn’t my House. But Skylur expected us to understand the purpose of his orders and not the letter. Bian was telling me the responsibility for this was on me. Fine, I’d take that.

  And she expected something as big in return.

  What was I getting myself into?

  David flicked on a flashlight and shone it down on Vera. It looked even worse than it had felt.

  Bian’s eyes were inches away. The look in them—I’d seen that before. It wasn’t about whether she’d heal Vera. I was sure she’d do that anyway. It was about me and how I’d respond.

  I’d trusted her with my life.

  “Blank check,” I whispered, knowing she’d read my lips.

  I barely had time to register the changes in her face. The eyes widening, the fangs appearing. Then she was bent over Vera.

  “What’s she doing?” the colonel yelled. His hands were on the verge of grabbing Bian and wrestling her back. I stopped him.

  “It’s her only chance,” I said.

  “She’s not…”

  “She’s just healing her. Nothing else. You have to trust me.” I gripped his shoulder, leaving more bloody hand smudges on his shirt.

  He looked up at me. I don’t know what he saw then, in the thin glow from David’s flashlight. I was different from the last time I’d seen him, obviously. In that time, I’d taken huge steps to becoming Athanate and Were. I was very different inside. From my point of view, the face in the mirror was looking crazier every day. But Colonel Laine saw something different.

  I felt the panic drain out of him, as if my touch had somehow provided a conductor for it to flow away. His face sagged and I realized that, for the first time, he was feeling his age.

  Then he did something that only he would have thought of. He slipped his hands around one of Bian’s and squeezed gently.

  For an instant I could sense all four of us, like something electric passed between us.

  David jerked me back. “Apache in the air,” he shouted. He’d retrieved my comms headset from the floor and he’d been listening in.

  I ignored the slippery, sticky feel of the blood all over the headset and put it on. I waved David back to his seat.

  The colonel pulled his headset back up from around his neck. Much more sensible place to leave it.

  The pilot was reporting his IR systems were wasted. He’d put lights on and was doing a sweep near where we’d been, using the low light system. I wasn’t sure if the IR laser would have taken that out as well, but I’d missed my chance. Without the IR, the synthetic view the pilot would be getting wasn’t good. He’d probably see the dust Victor had kicked up at the evac zone, but what then?

  If he took a chance and fired up his radar, we’d light up like a beacon on his screen.

  We couldn’t outrun the Apache and we sure as hell couldn’t outrun his missiles. I’d hoped they would have been on the ground longer, but the dice seemed to be falling against us this time.

  I wracked my brain, but there was no way we would stay hidden if he used all his weapons systems to look for us.

  And if he found us, it came down to the biggest gamble of all.

  What would that pilot do if the Nagas told him to take us out?

  “Victor, head for the I-76, low as you can go,” I said.

  “We already there on height, girl,” he grumbled. “Don’t want to trip over no telephone lines.”

  But he swung the nose northwest and eased the power up.

  “Lower, damn you. Find a road going north and follow it.”

  “Crazy bitch.” But he banked and swooped lower and suddenly we were hurtling along a dirt track heading toward the interstate. We’d be kicking up a dust storm behind us, but the Apache would take time to find that in the darkness.

  I eased around Bian and Vera, coming up on Victor’s shoulder.

  “ETA interstate?”

  Victor jerked his head up.

  Yeah, look out the window, crazy bitch.

  I could see the all-night interstate traffic. The bright lights of Mac trucks swept along west to Denver, east out to Nebraska. The occasional late-night car. Way over in the distance, a haze of dim lights that marked a prairie town.

  “Tuck us in behind a big, fat truck, Mr. G.”

  He snorted. “You are crazy, like a friggin’ headless chicken.”

  “Or a train, if you see one going in the right direction.”

  “You have any idea what the slipstream from a truck does to a helicopter?” Victor’s eyes remained firmly fixed on the road ahead, but I knew he wanted to glare daggers at me.

  “Prefer a rough ride or Hellfire in your ass?”

  He didn’t reply.

  On comms, the Apache pilot was arguing with the Nagas.

  “Negative, Bravo. I say again, negative. Whatever took out my IR is just waiting for me to fire up my radar.”

  “Not a suggestion, Eagle. There are no other military aircraft involved. There’s one civilian helicopter. You have countermeasures. This is Bravo, repeating direct order, commence search on radar.”

  The interstate was rushing up out of the night.

  So were telephone and power lines.

  Victor hauled back and the Bell went up with a stomach-kicking leap. I lost the interstate and hung onto the seatback, looking out at stars. The colonel fell down over Vera and Bian, wedging them into place with his body. Pia, David and Tom were the sensible ones, strapped in.

  The Bell tilted and plunged down on the north side of the interstate, then the head swung back up again like a drunken dolphin. The helicopter slowed, swerved in and righted itself. Then we were abruptly holding formation with an eighteen-wheeler heading for Denver, shaking like a speedboat in choppy water as the slipstream buffeted us.

  I pulled my mike out of the way. “Everyone okay?” I yelled.

  Thumbs from the back. Bian paused to say something I was probably better off not hearing, then took the opportunity to lock herself more firmly against the seats and went back to her task.

  “Radar system up,” the gunner’s voice from the Apache said, and I froze.

  There was silence on the TacNet.

  The colonel turned his head and looked up at me.

  I shrugged. There was nothing more we could do.

  “Eagle at fifteen hundred feet. Search radius fifty miles. There’s nothing flying, Bravo. Nothing new on the ground between I-70 and I-76.” The pilot was doing his job, but he wanted out.

  “Go higher, Eagle. Initiate search pattern west of grid 5-18. Air and ground. They have to be there somewhere. Break. Pursuit cars, return to closest interstate. Monitor channel 1. Report position on channel 2.”

  Victor eased in closer. If the Apache kept going up, there was a point at which the radar returns would reveal a double for our shielding truck and us. How hard were they looking?

  What if they came this way? We’d slowed to hide behind the truck. The Apache would overha
ul us in minutes.

  Closer. The juddering increased, and the sweat stood out on Victor’s face as he fought the controls to keep us in place.

  He’d made us safe for another few moments, but all it needed was the smallest thing to go wrong. Even the truck driver glancing back and seeing a helicopter sneaking along beside him. He was bound to hit the brakes and we’d overshoot. The Apache weapons control system would have us the second that happened.

  “Eagle at three thousand. Commencing sweep to north.”

  Victor eased us in even more, then slid us into a position above the truck. The buffeting was less there, and if the Apache was looking straight down, our radar return would merge with the truck. What would we look like at an angle? If he saw a strange return for a truck would he come looking? There was enough light on the interstate for his low light system to show him what we were doing.

  And how long could we keep this up? We were about thirty minutes away from the outskirts of Denver at the truck’s speed, if Victor could keep this up. I tried to do the math. If the Apache missed us this sweep, their search pattern would take them down as far as I-70 and back. That’d have to take fifteen minutes this sweep, then maybe ten on the next—the interstates got closer. Five minutes for the next sweep. We had two search sweeps, maybe three, to evade before we got too close to Denver and Petersen called it off.

  He would call it off, wouldn’t he? How desperate was he getting?

  “Eagle! Pursuit 7 reports helicopter flying along I-76 westbound, three miles west of the town of Wiggins.”

  Shit! Our luck just wasn’t holding tonight.

  The colonel pulled himself up alongside me, both of us looking out at the expanse of night around us.

  “Nothing on our screens,” the gunner said.

  “They’re in tight behind a truck. I’m closing.” Different voice. Pursuit 7 must have got on the interstate at just the wrong point.

  Damn our luck. We’d have to move. A car on the highway wasn’t an ideal platform for firing, but I didn’t want him firing up into our belly. We were caught between the rock and the real hard place, and we were down to our last gamble.

  I tapped Victor and pointed to where I thought Denver was, over the horizon.