Girl Rides the Wind

by Jacques Antoine

  “Don’t follow too closely… just in case, you know.” She slipped the strap for the M4 over her head and drew the wakizashi, careful not to let it flash in the light. “What kind of rounds do we have for the grenade launcher?”

  “Six HE rounds.”

  “Any Starbursts?”

  “One, I think, maybe two. Do you have a plan?”

  “If we have to light ’em up, Connie and Danko may be able to do some damage from their overwatch.”

  She knew the downside to this tactic, since the Starburst round would probably blind her snipers as much as it would Diao’s men. All she could do was shake her head and hope it didn’t come to that. Then she was off, moving at speed on a diagonal course into the ravine, with Perry picking his way with more care and trying to keep eyes on her in the dark.

  The ravine floor proved to be more uneven than she expected, undulating gently for most of it, and broken by at least one steeper interrupted rise that she could see. The most regular trajectory, and the one freest of obstructions appeared to run along the base of the western ridge, and this also seemed desirable because it promised to bring them out near the position occupied by Durant and Kathy.

  It didn’t take long to discover a problem with this path – the glowing end of a cigarette signaled danger twenty meters ahead, though she’d already been tipped off by the smell of smoke that hung in the still air. She held up a hand to signal Perry, and reckoned the distance remaining to the LZ. Still too far to risk allowing a general alarm. When she turned around to get Perry’s attention, he didn’t even need to see the expression on her face, which was practically invisible under the darkening sky. He pulled the little princess off his back and held her against his chest, her face looking backwards over his shoulder.

  One deep breath to clear her mind, and Emily dug hard on a steep diagonal to her left, meaning to circle above the hostile position, in stealth initially, and then burst down through the underbrush at the last second. If it was only a three-man team, she might dispatch them before anyone got a shot off… but if there were four, she’d have to get lucky.

  The foliage parted, and she took her enemies by surprise, growling like a panther in the night, launching herself at them from the darkness. Her blade, like a talon, tore out the throat of one man, and slashed behind the ear of a second, but as he turned away, it caught in the vertebrae of the neck and she had to release it to settle with the last man. A roundhouse kick to the face smothered his voice and left him open to a fierce chop across the throat before he could raise his rifle, but in a spasm a finger caught in the trigger-guard, and squeezed off a round, its report deadened by the heavy, humid air.

  “Shit.” Emily wrenched the wakizashi from one man’s neck and waved Perry forward, while she wiped the blood from the blade.

  “Do you think it carried?”

  “No time to worry about it. Let’s just get moving.” She slipped the blade back into the saya and pulled the M4 over her back.

  “Heads up, everyone. We may have a hot LZ in a second. Over.” Perry put the little princess on his back and ran after Emily.

  “Looks like we’re cleared hot,” Connie responded. “Mobile targets only. Over.”

  “The bird’s three minutes out,” Perry huffed as he ran, struggling to keep the underbrush from striking the precious burden on his back.

  It may have seemed like an eternity, but less than two minutes passed before Emily crested a slight rise and saw the waves. Off to her right, the stars had disappeared and the sky was just beginning to put on its opaque blue. The gap between the two ridges was near its widest here, at a little over a hundred meters, and off in the distance Emily heard the reassuring thump-thump-thump of a CH-46E

  “Still too dark for a smoke signal,” Emily called back to Perry, who remained in a crouch just behind the rise, unwilling to risk exposing the little princess before the bird arrived.

  “Give ’em some green smoke anyway.”

  Emily threw a canister across the beach and watched as a faint plume rose straight up, undisturbed in the still air. Off to her left, Kathy helped Durant find steady footing to cross the rocky promontory that defined the western edge of the sand, and the roar of the chopper’s blades scattered the smoke signal as it settled in and dropped the tailgate. In seconds, Kano’s Jietai platoon had disembarked, and Perry broke cover and ran for the back of the bird, while Emily barked instructions to Kano in Japanese.

  “Diao’s men are a half klick that way.” She gestured to the ravine and waited until after the engine noise had diminished before continuing. “At least eighty men, now alert to our presence. Two roving patrols approaching from either edge. Where’s Tsukino?”

  Kano’s men remained motionless for a moment, eyes fixed on the small child in their midst, as if none of them really expected to find her there. Or perhaps that’s just how it is to encounter a royal personage – the surprise never really goes away. Once they’d composed themselves, every man bowed to her.

  “Where is Tsukino?” Emily asked again, and Kano gestured to the tailgate.

  “I still don’t know why you want him here. His wrist injury makes him useless, even if he were trustworthy.”

  “Get Durant and Kathy aboard,” she said to Perry, and took Toshi from his arms. The princess wrapped her arms tightly around Emily’s neck, frightened by the noise, and the sudden appearance of so many soldiers. Emily found Tsukino seated inside the bird, one arm still bandaged and in a sling, staring at his shoes. When he looked up, astonishment registered immediately on his face, and he stood up to bow. “Hime.”

  “Kochira wa Tsukino-san desu, Hime.” Emily tried to put the princess in one of the seats along the side of the cabin, but she refused to let go, until she turned to look at Tsukino’s face.

  “Hajimemashite,” she said, and reached a hand to him.

  “Yoroshiku,” Tsukino said, and bowed even more deeply. “I am at your service, your highness.”

  “Guard the princess with your life, Tsukino-san,” Emily said, fixing him with a steely-eyed stare. “That is your task.”

  It took a moment to persuade Toshi to let go of Emily in favor of Tsukino, and in that time, Kathy and Durant found seats opposite them.

  “You must be brave, your Highness,” Emily said, kneeling to look into her eyes, and holding one hand against her cheek. “Tsukino-san will keep you safe.”

  “Why me?” he whispered in Emily’s ear as soon as she stood up. “Why would you trust me? No one else does.”

  “Never mind that. I’m certain this is what Gyoshin-san would want… to stay safe, and to do your duty.”

  Tsukino’s eyes grew wide as saucers at the mention of that name. “I never knew anything of her grandfather’s schemes.”

  “I know,” Emily said. “Now do this for your country, and restore your honor.” She turned to the fight engineer and signaled him that it was time to go. “Tell the pilot to get this crate out of here. His call sign is now Chrysanthemum One.”

  Toshi ran after her to the edge of the tailgate, the glow of the sun just beginning to burn off the dawn’s twilight, and Tsukino attempted to restrain her as gunfire crackled in the distance.

  “It’s gonna get hot in a second,” the tailgunner yelled, and the pilot spun up the rotors.

  Standing on the LZ just outside the tailgate, a cloud of dust and sand swirling up around her, Emily shielded her eyes and reached up to prevent Toshi from jumping down into her arms. But the look in the princess’s eyes was not fearful – more serene than anything else, as if she were issuing some sort of command to a vassal – and she reached down to touch Emily’s outstretched fingers. In the brief moment before Tsukino pulled the princess back up the ramp, Emily felt a tingle run through her hand, and the world went quiet in her ears. Sand pelted her face as she looked up at Toshi’s face and caught a glimpse of something eternal in her eyes, something that demanded her assent… and the bird began to gain altitude.

  With her head down, Emily ran clear
of the LZ and turned back from the rise at the mouth of the ravine to watch the bird make a slow turn in preparation for its return journey. When bullets raked the starboard side as far forward as the cockpit, the Phrog settled back down in the sand only a few meters from where it had started.

  “Omagod,” Emily shrieked, and ran back, trailed by Perry who laid down covering fire off to the right, where Diao’s eastern patrol must have just cleared the point. Kano’s men found flanking positions and returned fire, and the tailgunner sprayed the treeline, until no more fire came from that direction. More ominously, however, sounds of gunfire came from the ravine itself, where Diao’s main force must have been advancing as fast as they could move, hindered only by whatever mayhem Connie and Danko could rain down on them.

  Once the rotors had slowed enough to hear, Emily shouted into the cockpit window, “Captain, you have to get this bird in the air.”

  “Co-pilot’s wounded bad, LT… the corpsman’s working on him… and the hydraulics are shot. It’s gonna take a few minutes, at least, to relaunch. Second bird’s ten, maybe fifteen minutes out.”

  “Lieutenant Gunderson’s qualified on Phrogs,” she shouted. “Put her in the other seat and get this thing the hell out of here. We’ll try to buy you some time.”

  Perry attempted to confer with Kano and Ishikawa, but wasn’t confident they understood him, and waved Emily over.

  “Expect another hostile patrol coming from the west,” she said, in Japanese.

  Kano nodded and barked instructions to Ishikawa. “Hold this position with two fire teams. I will lead the rest of the platoon to eliminate the second patrol, then make a flanking maneuver over the ridgeline and come in behind Diao’s forces.”

  “We have two snipers on overwatch on the western ridgeline,” Emily said. “They have instructions to move laterally to slow Diao’s advance. But I’m sure he will send men to neutralize them.”

  Kano nodded again and shouted another instruction to Ishikawa. Then he turned back to face her. “What will you do?”

  “The Lieutenant Commander and I will set up on the opposite ridgeline and try to hinder his advance from there. We need to prevent him from bringing up anything heavier, like RPG’s, or that helicopter’s doomed.”

  Perry reached over to reconnect Emily’s radio. “We can’t afford to have you go silent now. Too much depends on our comms.”

  Once they’d rounded the foot of the eastern ridge, they came upon what was left of Diao’s first patrol, all four men dead, one of them cut in half by the tailgunner’s 50 cal. Gruesome as the scene would have been to anyone else, Emily felt only relief. A threat to the princess had been neutralized, and for once she wasn’t the cause of the mayhem. At least, she had partners in this nasty business.

  “What are you doing?” Perry said when she turned to climb the ridgeline. “You’ll be a sitting duck up there.”

  “Diao can’t allow the princess to get away, which means he’s going to send fire teams along both ridgelines to take it out. We have the west covered already…”

  “… and you’re gonna cover the east? Let’s move along the shoreline and climb the ridge further down.”

  “I can’t risk letting anyone get by us.”

  “Fine,” he said, and turned to follow her.

  “No, you follow the shoreline and come up behind anyone I encounter.”

  * * *

  “We had ’em contained a quarter klick from the LZ.” Connie’s voice crackled in Emily’s earpiece. “You’ve got two four-man teams coming your way, one on the ridge, and one eighty feet below. Over.”

  “Do you have a shot? Over.”

  “No. We’re moving to new positions toward northern end of the ravine. The Jietai appear to be preparing to take out the units Diao sent for us. Was that your doing? Over.”

  An explosion from an HE round lit up the morning air, and Emily used the distraction to take cover just below the ridgeline. Perry would clean up whatever remained of the first team, and she’d have to manage the second one. Without the cover of darkness, she would lack the element of surprise on which she’d depended so heavily just an hour earlier.

  The blast on the ridgeline would drive the second group to seek cover below her position, expecting the danger to come from a different direction. Once they’d dug themselves in, she sprayed their position with bullets, maybe striking one or two of them, and when they tried to reposition for better cover, she hit them with another HE round. If any survived the blast, she’d have to clean it up later.

  In the meantime, whatever order had arranged Diao’s men before seemed to have broken down, and she spotted movement in several directions among the trees below her position.

  “The ridgeline is clear.” Perry’s voice reassured her, like a voice from the sky. “Your position is about to be overrun. You’d better hotfoot it to the tree-cover at your three. Over.”

  Emily considered his advice, and thought better of it. He was probably right, but that would leave her in a static post, and she wouldn’t be much good to anyone there, no matter how many clips she had left. She loaded the Starburst round and lofted it over the front of Diao’s advance. The scene was still dim enough in the ravine to get some use out of a really bright burst, that might momentarily blind his men and allow Danko to hold his position a bit longer.

  Hoping to disrupt the men coming up the hill toward her position, she fired two more HE rounds at her nine – the opposite direction from the one Perry had urged – and charged directly at them, counting on the smoke and dust in the air to sow just enough confusion to cover her. With Perry howling in her ear, she slashed at a few men as she went by, and kept running, until she found herself crouching next to a stand of bamboo behind Diao’s line. No fire came her way, which suggested they hadn’t been able to track her movements, at least, not yet.

  Chapter 27

  When Your Number’s Up…

  “We need a little more time,” Connie said. The noise of a nearby firefight chattered and roared in the background. “The Jietai are TIC just below the western ridge. Over.”

  “What the hell is taking the second bird so long?” Danko’s voice sounded increasingly anxious. “We may not have enough firepower to keep Diao from pushing through to that beach, and that bird is still a sitting duck. Over”

  “We should divert the second bird to the western LZ,’ Perry suggested. “Shake Kano’s men loose. Over”

  “What?” Emily growled. “Toshi’s still not in the air? It may be time for something crazy.”

  “No,” Connie said. “It’s definitely not time for anything crazy. We can make this work for a few more minutes. That’s all we need. I’m on the east ridgeline now, and I’ve got a clear view of the next rise they’ll have to cross.”

  “Listen to Connie,” Perry urged. “We’re not at crazy yet. We still have options. Over”

  “I can’t risk it. Nobody shoot Diao for the next few minutes. If I can distract him…”

  “Why not?” Danko said. “If we take him out, doesn’t that end the conspiracy? Over.”

  “Because if you shoot him, nothing will prevent his men from shooting me. Over.”

  “What the hell are you thinking?” Perry’s voice shook as he propelled himself down the slope.

  Too late – Emily had already lofted her last three HE rounds over the heads of Diao’s men, effectively stalling their advance toward Ishikawa’s position for the moment… and focusing their attention on her.

  Perry stopped halfway down the slope, having realized he couldn’t help her any longer. Becoming a hostage would only undermine whatever it was she hoped to accomplish. He took up a position near a stand of evergreens – no cover from fire, but at least he could remain hidden there, and try to get an angle on Diao.

  Lt Yan appeared, his shaved head only partly covered by a cap worn at an angle. Perry could only watch in horror as he sent men to prevent her retreat – nothing would be gained by shooting him, and something about his manner seemed
not quite what he expected. Initially, he pushed men aside to find out what had caused the commotion at the rear, but when he spotted her, his shoulders slumped, as though he were actually sad to see her at that moment.

  “That’s Yan.” Perry whispered as loud as he dared into the radio. “Do you read? That’s Yan, shaved head, ball cap. He’s the one Em said not to shoot, and now I think I see why. Over.” No one responded.

  A moment later Diao emerged from the right, as his men cleared a path for him. Diao spoke loudly, but Perry couldn’t understand anything he said, though his vaunting tone was clear enough. He stood a few meters from the clearing where his men had contained her.

  “I’ve got a bead on Diao,” Danko said. “Do I take it? Over.”

  “No,” Connie said. “Can’t you see? It’s like she’s tricked them into a cease-fire. If you shoot him, they’ll just shoot her. Over.”

  “How the hell did she manage that?” Perry whispered into the radio absentmindedly. Even the distant gunfire from the opposite ridge, where Kano’s men were caught in a standoff, had gone quiet, though they couldn’t possibly see what was unfolding here. If only he could shoot Diao – he so ached to pull the trigger, even though his M4 had nowhere near the accuracy of the long guns Connie and Danko carried. All he could do was observe, and wait for his moment. Surrounded and glowering, Emily cocked her head to one side and smiled crookedly at Diao.

  “After all your simpering about honor in the XO’s wardroom, it’s good to see you as you really are,” she said. “A grasping, ambitious schemer, ready to betray anyone and anything.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with ambition,” he replied in English. “I do what I do for the sake of China.”

  Emily shouted something in Mandarin, evidently speaking for the benefit of his men, and they murmured uneasily.

  “You were the final ingredient to our plan,” Diao said, making a visible effort to control the situation, and still speaking in English, perhaps because he didn’t wish to share the details of the plan with his men. “… and it’s not too late to add you to the mix.”