Whee, whee! Rounds went blasting over my head, followed immediately by the sharp cracks of gunfire. I had been spotted, and then some. I ducked and ran as fast as I could across the pavement, dodging back and forth, and I made it to the grass median. More gunshots and then my feet were slapping on the pavement of the second stretch of highway, and I didn’t try to make it fancy or pretty as I flopped to the ground and rolled down the other embankment, right into another drainage ditch. My breathing was harsh and spit was running down my chin. I dumped the blanket roll and edged up to the edge of the embankment, peering through the tall grass. Across the way I saw uniformed and armed men heading out into some sort of skirmish line. I put the rifle to my shoulder, aimed through the scope at some guy with a gun, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. I looked at the bolt. Wide open. Out of ammunition.
“Shit,” I whispered, slithering back down into the cold water of the ditch. I fumbled through my coat pocket, took out a now-soggy cardboard box of .22 cartridges. Some shouts came at me from across the highway. The box felt dangerously light. I popped open the flap and poured out the tiny cartridges into my dirt-covered hand. Six. Just six shots left. Not even one more, to make it a lucky seven?
I went to work, trying to ignore the yells from the militiamen scant meters away from me across the lanes of the deserted highway. Deserted—except for those three vehicles waiting for me. I spared a quick glance up the highway, but the UN Land Crusiers were hidden by brush from this angle. I could barely make out the blue and white UN banner. I reloaded the tube magazine, put it back into the Remington with shaking hands, snapped the bolt back in and then squirmed my way back up the embankment. Still some movement, heading off in both directions. For a militia, these clowns weren’t half bad. I snapped off two shots and then ducked again as return fire went whistling over my head.
I stayed bent over, started moving as fast as I could, my feet slopping through the mud and water of the drainage ditch. More gunfire, and then a shout, heard clearly: “Might as well give up now, UN man! We’ve got you smoked!”
I decided it was time to start talking as well, but not to them. If I was lucky, the three UN four-by-fours up ahead were guarded by cousins of Charlie, our Marine escort from such a long time ago. I didn’t want any misunderstanding as I blundered my way toward them, carrying a loaded rifle in my hands.
“UN coming in!” I yelled. Then I remembered a code phrase I had learned back when I’d thought I could make a damn difference in this damn country, a code phrase of identification. “This is Geneva, Geneva, coming in!”
Finally the brush gave out and there I was. The three Toyota Land Cruisers were all parked on the side of the road, in a row. And if I could have cried, I would have started weeping.
For all three vehicles were abandoned, shot up, tires flattened and glass shattered. Even the UN banner was torn and burned, and judging by the rust around the bullet holes and shrapnel gashes, these Land Crusiers had been here for a while. What I’d earlier thought had been a person was just a coat, hanging from the side of an open door. The place was deserted.
Abandoned. Just like me.
CHAPTER TWENTY
But I wasn’t ready to give up, not yet, especially since those fine fellows out there who were hunting me probably had plans for my capture, trial and sentence. Plans that all ended up with me getting shot in the back of the head on this stretch of American highway in about five or ten minutes.
I kept my head down, looked through a Land Cruiser’s smashed windows and open doors, hoping I could find something, anything, to help me out. Perhaps a radio with its batteries still working, maybe even a weapon left behind by one of the military escorts. I peered through the open doors and rummaged among the wreckage, trying to ignore the rusty stains on the torn upholstery, the remnants of bandages and some torn clothing.
Nothing.
More gunshots, and a thonk! as a bullet struck metal. I got behind the middle vehicle and fired off a shot in reply. How many left? I counted back. Just three. Damn it, just three.
“Hey, UN man, we’re gonna get ya! Just a matter of time!”
Another shot, coming from further up the highway. Damn it all to hell. They had me surrounded. I looked at the only path remaining open for me, to the right of the vehicles and leading away from the highway. But there were no woods or shrubbery there, just a knee-deep swamp of cattails and other growing things. If I started slogging through there, they would—
Thonk, thonk! More incoming gunfire, and by instinct I fired three more times—and then felt the stubborn weight of the dead trigger.
Empty.
I squirmed away toward another vehicle that had its rear door hanging open. Crazy, random thoughts were galloping through my mind, everything from simply hiding under one of the shattered Land Cruisers to trying to jump-start one of the engines and maybe make my escape that way. But I didn’t think I would have the time to learn the intricacies of how to jump-start a shot-up Toyota four-by-four.
I looked into the rear compartment. More bloody bandages, an open first-aid kit, and attached to the side wall, above the tire well, a bright orange plastic box, secured by straps. I unsnapped the box and sat down on the ground, with a rear tire against my back. I opened the lid—and nestling there was a flare gun, with three cartridges. I pulled out the gun, popped open the barrel, and slid in one of the fat flare shells. I snapped the damn thing shut, looked at the instructions pasted into the lid of the container—which looked to be about twenty paragraphs of fine print with illustrations in orange and red. Sorry, no time. There was a hammer just above the gun’s handle, which I pulled back.
I wiggled my way below the Land Cruiser’s undercarriage, holding the flare gun out in front of me. The shooting had stopped for just a moment, and across the other lanes I saw figures scurrying forward, coming up the embankment. Somebody yelled out something and a line of about six or seven militiamen came up from the other side and started trotting across the asphalt lanes. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger of the flare gun. There was a pop! and a loud whoosh! as the flare, bright orange and red and almost too bright to look at, shot out from the wide-mouthed barrel and went across the highway, trailing sparks and smoke. The approaching gunmen scattered as the flare actually bounced twice on the asphalt before burying itself into the far woodline and brush.
Then I heard something.
More shots, and a couple more yells. I was breathing really hard now as I squirmed my way back out, banging my head against a piece of the four-by-four’s transmission. I tried to listen even harder, but all I could make out was the pounding of blood in my ears. I sat up, looked about me. Samuel’s Last Stand. If my father was lucky, maybe he’d find out in a week or two. Maybe.
What now?
Trust, I thought. Trust in what you heard.
I reloaded the flare gun and this time, instead of pointing it at my pursuers, I aimed it straight up into the sky. Another satisfying pop! and whoosh! and the orange-red flare went way up, almost as bright as the sun to look at. It seemed to go up a couple of hundred meters before arcing over and falling back to earth. Another couple of thonks! and some glass from a side window fell into my lap.
One more time with the flare gun, and even though the cartridge was as fat as a child’s fist my hand was trembling so hard that I could hardly put it into the barrel or breech or whatever it was called. I spared another quick glance, saw more figures coming my way, less than a hundred meters, closing in from both sides. Again, I thought I heard something.
No time to think. Just time to act.
Pop! and whoosh! My last flare went up into the sky, and this time, oh, this time, before the flare sputtered out and fell back to the bloody ground the noise was louder—much louder.
Helicopters, heading this way.
“C’mon, boys, c’mon,” I said. Then, louder, I yelled, “C’mon!”
Oh, what a sight. Three helicopters were racing toward me. Two of them peeled of
f as the other one came closer in and then spun to the side. There was a harsh rattling noise and I saw what looked to be sparks coming from the side of the ’copter, and I realized it was a door gunner, chewing up the scenery. And there sure as hell didn’t seem to be any return fire coming from the scattered militiamen.
“There you go!” I yelled. “Hose those bastards!”
But then I thought, shit, they might think I’m one of those bastards. I made sure I was well away from my discarded rifle and then I half-crawled, half-ran back to the last Land Cruiser in the line and tugged at the torn UN banner there, pulling it free. Now one of the helicopters was over the swampy area to the right, and I waved the flag at it. A gunner in the open door at the side waved back, and the helicopter came forward, touching down just ahead of the vehicles. There was a national flag on the tail, red and white and blue, just above the black stenciled UNFORUS. The gunner and another guy in a green jumpsuit and helmet were waving at me and I ran toward them, dropping the flag on the ground and shielding my face and eyes from the dust and gravel being tossed up. The roaring noise from the engine hurt my ears and the prop wash was pushing me back, like in one of those nightmares where you’re trying to escape the knife-wielding madman and your feet seem stuck in taffy.
Yet I kept on running, smelling aviation fuel now, and came up to the doorway where the machine gun rested on its mount. I tried to lift myself in and a couple of strong hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me aboard. And even before I got my feet into the open cabin the helicopter was up and away, gaining altitude. I rolled over on my side, breathing as hard as before but feeling as light as a feather, and exhilarated. I had made it. I was going to live. No more bad guys. No more nights on cold ground.
Standing over me was one of the crewmen, with his visor up. He had a thin mustache. He asked me something in a language I didn’t recognize and I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t understand.”
He smiled. “UN?”
“Yes.”
“Engländer? American?”
“No, Canadian,” I said.
He grunted, smiled again, moved his head closer.
“Canadian!” I yelled over the roar of the engine.
“Ah,” he said, now comprehending. “Canada! Canada good!” and he gave me a thumbs-up with a gloved hand.
I closed my eyes, breathed out, breathed in. “Yes,” I said. “Canada good.”
And we flew on, rising ever higher.
WE FLEW INTO a town outside the state capital, Albany, and the helicopter crew must have radioed ahead because when I got to the hospital the medics were quick and efficient. By the time we landed I had found out that the crew was from the Czech Republic, one of the NATO contingents of UNFORUS, and I shook everybody’s hand as I got out. I had walked maybe two or three meters across the parking lot of the hospital when a running crew of medical personnel grabbed me and, against my protests, bundled me onto a gurney and brought me into the hospital’s emergency room.
The next hour was a blur. I was stripped, examined, checked out and asked a couple of dozen questions—all medically related—and had my feet and teeth checked. A couple of scrapes and cuts on my face and hands were treated. Then I had an embarrassingly erotic sponge bath from two young French nurses—who murmured and giggled among themselves as they dried me off—and raced through eating an apple, a banana and a crunchy-peanut-butter sandwich—which tasted so good that my mouth was full of saliva just from thinking about it, even minutes after I had finished it. Then some clerk came by and issued me with new dosimetry—my old TLD was decaying in a ditch somewhere—and it was like I had gotten back my identity badge for my secret little club.
And an hour later, I was lying in a bed in a curtained-off area in the emergency room, being debriefed by a smiling older woman with black-rimmed glasses and a knitted pink sweater who said she was with the governing board of UNFORUS for the surrounding four counties. Right from the start, she reminded me of my grandmother on my father’s side, which was to the UNFORUS woman’s disadvantage, because I never could stand Grandmother Simpson. My father’s mother had none of his good qualities—what few there were—and many of his poorest qualities, including a hot-blood temper. She also had an urge to pinch my cheeks whenever I got within a meter of her, and a need to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and drink a highball before dinner.
“I’m Cecile O’Ryan,” said the woman in a soft Irish accent. “You’ve had quite the few days, Mister Simpson, haven’t you?”
“Sure,” I said. “The rest of my section, how are they?”
She looked down at her clipboard. “I’m sorry—I have bad news about one of your comrades.”
“Sanjay Prith,” I said. “Yes, I know. The others?”
“Oh,” she said brightly. “The others? The latest I heard they were all fine, though not out in the field. The armistice having failed … well, our field activities have certainly been restricted.”
“Hold on,” I said, feeling a lightness in my heart that I could barely stand. Miriam. Safe. Since that wonderful night in the tent, sharing our quarters and each other, and the bloody morning that followed I had tried not to think of her, tried not to wonder if something horrible had happened to her. But it hadn’t. She was safe. She was alive. She wasn’t stuck in some school-bus prison somewhere deep in the woods, trembling, waiting to be shot or raped when some armed man’s mood struck him. Safe. I took a good, long breath.
Now to the business at hand. For example, one Peter Brown, that bastard Brit. I wanted to tell Ms O’Ryan about Peter, about his meeting with the militia units. But I wanted to get one even more important piece of business taken care of before anything else.
O’Ryan said, “Well, I’m sure your colleagues will be glad to hear you’re back. Now, though, we have a number of questions that we’d like answered.”
“Sure,” I said. “But first things first.”
“Oh?” she asked, putting about a ton of irritation into that one-syllable word.
“Yes, ‘oh’,” I said. “There were a man and a young boy. Grandfather and grandson. They fed me and protected me. I want them to be picked up and brought somewhere safe. Here, if that makes sense.”
“Their names?” O’Ryan asked, irritation still showing in her tone.
“Stewart Carr. And his grandson Jerry. Plus a dog called Tucker.”
“Ah, a dog. Well, perhaps after we’re done here, we can file a report and—”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “This isn’t a request.”
“What is it, then? An order?”
I shifted my bare legs under the blankets. “Call it what you will. All I’m saying is that I will gladly be debriefed, tell you what I know about things, tell you the best guess I have for the location of one of the main militia camps. But I’m not saying a word until I see Mister Carr and his grandson. And their dog. In front of me.”
“Do you know how many refugees and terrorized people we’re trying to secure, trying to process out there?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care,” I said. “I only care right now about that guy, his grandson and their dog. Tucker.”
O’Ryan’s eyes got icy, just like Grandmother Simpson’s. “You’re in no position to demand anything, young man.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But what kind of position I am in is to contact my old friends back at my old employer, the Toronto Star, and tell them what kind of cluster-fuck—excuse my language—is going on here in the States. How my unit in particular spent most of its time driving in circles, trying to uncover war-crimes evidence, including the famous Site A, and how we found shit.”
“You’ve signed a confidentiality agreement,” O’Ryan snapped.
“Right. And let’s see who’ll try to enforce that if I resign from the UN’s service. All right?”
She continued glaring at me, and then tried another tack. “We have a report that you were using a firearm just before being picked up.”
“So?�
��
“That’s in violation of a number of agreements between UNFORUS and the local authorities. A noncombatant such as yourself is strictly forbidden to bear arms,” O’Ryan said. “You could find yourself in a county jail for a very long time, Mister Simpson, if we decided not to defend you against any local prosecution.”
I wiggled my toes. “Prosecute away,” I said. “I can hardly wait to see the coverage that would generate: a young man—myself, in this instance—defending himself against a half-dozen or so paramilitaries with a .22 rifle, a weapon designed for hunting squirrels rather than shooting human thugs. Being a former newspaperman myself, I can see how that would make a hell of a story. Wouldn’t it?”
Now O’Ryan was in thoroughly pissed-off mode, another familiar attitude of the not-so-dear, departed Grandmother Simpson. She got up suddenly and stalked out of my little curtained-off cubicle, without even bothering to draw the curtain behind her. I guessed that Peter would have to wait. I looked out into the bustling emergency room, saw a man in a uniform of some sort, groaning and moaning as an ER crew worked on him. Bloody bandages were on the dirty tiled floor. I couldn’t tell if he was paramilitary or UNFORUS, the poor guy, so I turned my attention to a plastic cup of ice water, which I sipped through a straw. It tasted wonderful.
As the wounded man was wheeled away another uniformed man came into my little cubicle. He was a beefy-looking German with a name tag on his heavy shirt that read HORLENGER. A blue UN beret, folded over, was stuck under his shirt’s shoulder loop.
“Simpson?”
“The same,” I said.
Horlenger grunted, produced a folded-over topo map. “This house, the one that has the man and the boy. Can you show it to me on the map?”
I said, “Can you show me the highway where I was picked up? By the three shot-up UN vehicles?”
“Ja, I can,” he said. He pushed aside my ice water on the little side table and unfolded the map. He oriented me by pointing out the stretch of highway where I had been rescued. I recalled the hill and my little run, and I said, “On the other side of the hill. Right here. A farmhouse, a big barn and a pickup truck in the front yard. There’s a field over here that should be a good landing place.”
Twilight Page 24
