Though Bowman had his arms over her head, she had a slice of vision between them and could see the narcos. And then she saw the strangest thing. A quick silvery glint, like light flashing off a mirror, and the narco stopped firing. The barrel of his rifle drooped, slow and easy as a dying flower, until its muzzle was pointing at the ground. Another flash of light, and the second narco dropped his rifle.
She watched as the two fell slowly forward, like men who had suddenly gone to sleep standing up. Before their bodies hit the ground, both heads toppled from their shoulders, fell to the trail, bounced, and rolled away. Then the bodies flopped down onto their chests, spouting blood from their headless necks.
She glimpsed something white slipping from the trail into the forest. Then nothing except the two headless corpses and one small, white dog with eyes like red coals. He walked to one of the decapitated heads, sniffed, and disappeared into the forest.
Running again, they broke out of the trees, into the meadow. The cave mouth was two hundred yards away. She was running harder and harder but moving slower and slower, her muscles tying up, face contorted with the pain flooding her body.
Bullets snapped and crackled around them, whined off rocks. It was not easy to shoot accurately at a dead run, she knew: the only reason the narcos had not brought them down already. That and aguardiente and God only knew what kind of drugs they’d taken. Bowman must have thrown another grenade, because she heard the explosion, closer this time, felt pieces of soil and rock pelt her head and back.
Halfway across the meadow, Hallie realized that Bowman wasn’t behind her. She stopped, turned, saw him kneeling, firing single shots from the AK-47, hitting men with every one. He yelled, “Keep going! To the cave!”
The narcos had come running out of the tree line into the open meadow, exposing themselves, and Bowman had six of them down in three seconds. There were a dozen others at least, but they understood what was happening, spun on their heels, and fled back toward the trees. Bowman got two more, fired the rest of that magazine in one long, ripping burst, and sprinted toward the cave’s mouth.
A line of boulders formed a natural wall a hundred feet from the cave, and Hallie was there, on hands and knees, gasping, when Bowman jumped over the rocks and landed beside her. “Stay here!”
He ran, crouching, back into the cave mouth, bullets spanging off boulders, spraying chips and splinters of rock. Hallie could see that his right side was soaked with blood, which was now running down over his pants as well. He disappeared into the cave, and for a few horrible moments Hallie was alone there. She inched her head out to look across the meadow, but the narcos were holding in cover, sheltering behind trees, spraying and praying, the bright muzzle flashes of their rifles reminding her of Fourth of July sparklers. Their wild firing made one continuous, ragged, wavering blast.
Bowman returned, carrying in his left hand both the odd weapon she had seen on the stealth flight in and the SIG Sauer.
There was something she did not understand. “Why are they coming after us like this?”
“We must have been approaching a secret camp. They can’t afford to let us get away now that we know its location.” He paused, checked the weapons. “Looks like you’ll get to shoot this sooner than we thought. It’s heavier than an AK and I’m not going to be any good one-handed. Twenty-four rounds. Look through the scope, put the pipper on your target, and squeeze.”
“Pipper?”
“Red dot. It’s the laser that tells the projectile where to go. For now just put out some suppressing fire.”
“What’s suppressing fire?”
Bowman actually grinned. “Just point it and shoot.”
“Give me the thing.”
Bowman handed her the weapon. It was much heavier than she had expected. She settled the stock into her shoulder, wrapped her right hand around the pistol grip, cradled the forestock in her bloody left palm, found the trigger. Her cut hand was on fire with pain, but she could manage it.
“Wait for them to shoot.” Bowman was getting his breath back. “The moment they stop, you pop up. Don’t linger. They can’t aim worth a damn, but they have a lot of bullets.”
“Okay.” She took a long breath, let it out, waited for a burst of automatic fire to end. When it did, she rose up, rested her elbows on top of the boulder, pointed the weapon’s muzzle at the tree line, and squeezed the trigger.
The next thing she knew she was sitting on the ground. Her butt hurt from the impact, but she still had hold of the weapon. Bowman hauled her up with his good arm. “Sorry. It was set on full auto.” He moved the fire-selector switch to its semiautomatic position. “One round for every trigger pull now. It’s got quite a kick on full auto.”
The recoil had been worse than that of the 12-gauge shotgun she’d used to hunt geese on the Chesapeake, but the second time she was ready for it, leaning into the weapon, back leg braced. She rose up, fired four rounds, each a half second apart, saw them rip the air with yellow bursts at the tree line, dropped down again.
“Don’t fire from the same position twice.” Bowman was sitting with his back against a boulder, cradling his right arm with his left, his voice getting a little sloppy, his tan face starting to whiten. She looked, saw blood on his other side, just above his waist. He had been hit again while out in the open.
“Bowman.”
“Nothing to worry about. Stay on those guys. They’ll have your last spot presighted.”
Hallie moved ten feet to her left, popped up, fired three times, took cover again. The narcos were staying in the cover of the trees, but she had seen several edging out from behind trunks, hesitating, thinking about making a rush, then fading back.
“Bowman, what do we do when this thing is out of ammunition?”
“Fourteen rounds in the SIG. But before then, we should be on our way back to Reynosa.”
“You tripped an EPIRB?”
“Yes. It was a backup I carried in a suit pocket. Before I started after you.”
“How did you get out of the cave?”
He gave her an odd look. “Tell you later. Hell of a story.”
Bursts of fire from the narcos. “Wait.” She moved to the left ten paces, popped up, shot four rounds, dropped down, and came back to Bowman. “They’re getting ready to do something.” She knelt on one knee, the weapon’s stock on the ground.
“What do you mean?”
“They’ve separated into two groups behind the tree line. I can see them moving back in there.”
“They can’t outflank us.” Bowman pointed behind them, where the cliff with the cave mouth rose two hundred feet straight up. “Ha. I wouldn’t have thought they knew enough to do it right.”
“What?”
“They’ll come in rushes. One group will fire to suppress you while the other advances. Then that group will go to ground and fire while the other advances. Pretty soon they’ll be close enough to use grenades.”
“I’ll shoot them as they come closer.”
“You’ll try. And you’ll get some. But it all comes down to math. I’m guessing there are twenty or thirty of them out there. Every one with an AK. Sooner or later, one will get you when you pop up to fire.”
“Not if I’m careful.”
Despite himself, he laughed. “You’ve got guts. But careful’s got nothing to do with it. Give me the weapon.”
She pulled back. “No. You can’t shoot it.” She moved out of reach. “Forget it.” There was an explosion, much louder than the AK-47s’ reports, out in front of their rocky parapet.
“Grenade,” he said. “Too far for them to throw all the way just yet. Give me the weapon.”
“No!”
Hallie had thought the first time she’d laid eyes on him that Bowman was not the kind of man you wanted to have angry at you. Now she realized how right she had been. The look in his eyes was like nothing she had ever seen. It made her think of an arcing high-voltage line. But then it faded.
“Stay here.” He crawled a
few yards to his left, where there was a tiny space between two adjacent boulders. He passed his hand quickly over it and there was a flurry of automatic rifle fire, bullets smacking and whining off the rocks in front of them, showering them with dust and fragments. “They had that one figured.”
He moved back to the right and lobbed two grapefruit-sized sized rocks out toward the narcos. “Now!”
While the narcos were distracted by Bowman’s “grenades,” she stood, fired five quick rounds, sweeping the muzzle from left to right, then dropped again just as a dozen AKs replied with long bursts.
“Those boys have a lot of ammo. We’ve been shooting off some ourselves. By my count, we have six left.”
Bowman looked at the weapon, then in the direction of the narcos, then back toward the cave. Another grenade blast, closer. “Hallie. I want you to go back in the cave. Take this.” He extended the SIG.
“And leave you here? Never happen.”
His face tightened. “Listen to me. I can hold off one rush. Maybe two. But then… There’s no sense them getting both of us. And you can take the moonmilk with you.” He stopped and they both listened. The narcos were shouting back and forth, their voices clearly coming from two different directions, moving closer all the time.
“They’ve got their groups sorted out.” Hallie stared at Bowman as she said this.
“You have to go into the cave.” Bowman’s voice was urgent, angry again. “When the team arrives, they’ll blow these guys to hell and get you out.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Bowman. So stop asking.”
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Of course I do.”
She did, and she didn’t. On the one hand, nothing had prepared her for this. But on the other, it felt strangely as if her whole life had been lived between two invisible converging lines that were about to intersect at a bright point she had always been able to see. It was the oddest brew of feelings. She was afraid, flushed with adrenaline, angry, sad. A thought flashed through: Dad would be proud of me. Hallie heard a flurry of shots from in front.
“They’re coming.” She slid right, popped up, fired two rounds at the rushing group and another at the one covering their advance. Screams, curses. While their heads were down, Bowman rose and, shooting left-handed, fired the SIG so fast it sounded more like a machine gun than a pistol.
Hallie looked at Bowman. An idea: “Why don’t we both run for the cave?”
“Without one of us laying down suppressing fire, they’d shoot us dead before we made it halfway.”
Then, for a moment, it was quiet. After so much noise for so long, the silence felt queer, more alien and threatening than the gunfire. She crawled over to Bowman, put the weapon down, locked her arms around him, and kissed him hard. Not much of a goodbye, but it would have to do.
“Where are the goddamned soldiers?” Hallie, a shout of fury and frustration. It was not supposed to end like this.
“They should have been here by now,” Bowman said, and Hallie heard the sadness of one who had waited too many times for help that never came. He gazed up at the empty sky.
“Wil.” She gestured helplessly, the right words lost somewhere beyond rage and grief.
He touched her face, his eyes full of pain as ancient as death, but his expression calm.
Then he turned to the front. “They’re close. They’ll be off balance coming over these boulders. Shoot as many as you can.” He got up on one knee, the Sig ready in his left hand. “Four rounds here,” he said.
She got to one knee also, weapon shouldered, ready for the final shots. She looked at Bowman’s face, awed by the peace she saw there, then past him and beyond the boulders and up to the sharp tops of the pines that were like spears, their green points touching the polished sky. A single bird, red as a new ruby, rose from the trees, and she watched it fly up and disappear into the sun.
They waited for the coming tide.
FORTY-SIX
“MAJOR? YOU ASLEEP?”
Lenora Stilwell opened her eyes, shook her head, focused. It was Jeran, one of the night-shift nurses at Reed.
“No,” she rasped, her throat on fire.
“I brought the tape recorder, like you asked for.” The BSL-4 suit muffled his voice, but she could see the concern in his eyes.
“Thank you, Jeran. I think I’m going to need your help.”
“Yes, ma’am. Anything at all.”
“I want to make a message for my family.” She had thought about asking for a video camera, but, given the way she looked, discarded that idea immediately. “Only I don’t think I can hold the recorder. My hands…”
“Yes, ma’am, I understand.”
“Could you turn it on for me and just put it on my chest?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jeran did that. “I set it on voice activation,” he said. “When you talk, it’ll run. When you stop, it’ll stop. I’ll go now, leave you with it. Check back in an hour or so.”
“Thank you, Jeran.” He nodded and left her alone. Stilwell took a deep breath, let it out, took another. She wanted to do this right, to keep the pain out of her voice, to tell them that it had not been bad.
“Hey, you guys. Doug and Danny.” She saw the little red light flicker when she spoke. “It’s me. I’m not in Afghanistan now. I know you haven’t heard from me for a while, but I also know that’s happened before, so hopefully you’re not too concerned. I’m okay. There have been some things going on that we couldn’t talk about. But don’t be worried. I’m good.
“I just wanted to tell you how much I love you both and how much joy you bring me. I honestly don’t know what I did to deserve you two, but…”
She paused, thinking where she wanted this to go. It was not about her. It was about them. What they meant to her.
“Do you guys remember the time when we went to that dude ranch in Wyoming? You were ten, Danny. On the first day, the wranglers were matching up all the guests with horses and they brought out this little pony for you. And you got mad and said, ‘I’m not gonna ride that midget thing. I want a real horse.’ So they brought you one, a mare named Sophy—remember?—and you rode her the whole time. That was so much fun. I will never forget the look on your face when they walked that pony out of the corral and brought Sophy in.”
She stopped, exhausted. She was up to about seven and a half, still managing, but knew it would not be long before she had to ask for serious meds. It was important that she get this done before then.
FORTY-SEVEN
HALLIE’S FACE WAS TURNED UP TO THE SKY, WATCHING. THE blasts of gunfire and grenade detonations continued, but she heard them as from a great distance. A soft, light breeze touched her face. There were no more thoughts, only a vast stillness enveloping her like mist in the mountains.
Suddenly a new sound, the whole world exploding. She looked at Bowman and knew. A barrage of grenades before their rush. In a moment the narcos would flood over their wall, shooting, killing them. She peeked over the rocks, watching the entire far meadow and tree line erupt in one long, roaring burst. But the narcos were not attacking. They were dying.
“Thirty-millimeter cannons.” Bowman was grinning. “Did you ever hear sweeter music?”
Two Apache attack helicopters were destroying the narcos. The black Osprey was hovering behind them, waiting for them to finish their work.
Most of the narcos were trapped in the open space between the tree line and Bowman and Hallie. The Apaches fired Hellfire missiles and the narcos simply disappeared in red fountains of flame and earth. In less than sixty seconds, nothing was moving, in the trees or the meadow. The Apaches kept watch, circling while the Osprey settled down. A ramp dropped and troopers in jungle-green camo sprinted out and set up a perimeter around the aircraft.
“Go!” Bowman pulled her up with his good arm. They left the shelter of their rocks and crossed the fifty yards to the Osprey at a dead run, Hallie carrying the moonmilk, Bowman the FAFO weapon. She was dimly aware of short bursts o
f fire from the troopers and the immense ripping roar of the Apaches’ cannons hosing down the forest. She ran up the ramp, its hard metal hurting her bare feet, and blundered straight into the arms of a sergeant, big as a wall, grinning.
“Go easy, ma’am,” he said. “You with us. Safe now.”
He deposited her gently onto one of the bench seats that ran the length of both sides of the fuselage interior. Bowman dropped down beside her. The team rushed back aboard and the ramp door closed with a hiss. Acceleration shoved her down as the Osprey shot up and away from the meadow.
Two medics went to work on Bowman, laying him flat on the deck. The men watched, mildly interested. They had seen wounds before. These were not the killing type. When the medics cut away Bowman’s shirt, she saw the two surprisingly small red holes, one in his right upper chest, the other through the muscle just above his left hip bone. They irrigated the wounds, infused them with antibiotics and coagulants, and gave him a handful of capsules, which he swallowed dry-throated. One of them started an IV transfusion in his right arm. “You want a little something for the pain, sir? We can put it in that other arm there.”
“All good, Sergeant, but thanks.”
Bowman got up and came to sit beside Hallie on the bench again. The medic hung the IV bag from a hook on the fuselage. There were a lot of things she wanted to say, questions she needed to ask, events she had to tell Bowman about. But inside, the Osprey wasn’t so quiet, and she would have had to shout. There were all those troopers, too, at ease now, the day’s work done, sitting on the benches, rifles between their legs like hockey players with their sticks. They were all, to a man, looking at her and grinning.
She grinned back at them, then stood up, stepped across the fuselage, pulled one young trooper to his feet, kissed him on both cheeks. He sat back down, grinning even wider and looking slightly dazed. To the rest of them, standing in the middle of the aircraft bay, she gave a double okay sign, thumbs and forefingers circled. They understood her gratitude and answered: every right arm came up, fist extended, thumb upraised, and they let fly a thunderous “OOH-RAH!”
The Deep Zone Page 34
