Zournal (Book 5): Feeling Lucky?

by Merritt, R. S.

  “They killed everybody.” A younger Indian had spoken up. He looked embarrassed when everyone focused on him. He looked to the chief looking guy who gave him a nod.

  He started over. “They killed everybody. We came out here on a supply run. We’re starting to get self-sufficient but there’s still a lot of things we need that it’s easier to scavenge than make ourselves. We killed some of the blue skins and had gathered a good deal of stuff to take back. When we got back to the village though it was all shot up. My little brother was laying in the dirt, dead. A couple of the women were dead but mostly it was just the men. Men, boys and very old women. All dead. Everywhere. The Koreans came and they killed the ones they didn’t want and they took the rest. Including my fiancé and my little sister.”

  He stopped talking and turned his head so we couldn’t see his eyes. The chief stepped in to speak when it became obvious the young brave was not going to be able to keep speaking.

  “Same for all of us. We’re the last of the Havasupai. The Koreans came by helicopter. They came yesterday. We’re going to get a couple of helicopters and go after them. We’re hoping we can free the women and escape.”

  “How many helicopters do you have and how many pilots?” Ann asked. I could almost see the gears clicking around in her head. Or, at least I could if this dumb ass dog would get off of me. I didn’t really need to be playing with her while holding a grenade I’d pulled the damned pin out of.

  “Tons of copters. About half of us are certified but all of us can fly. Easy money here on the rez if you can fly so everybody tries to learn. How come?”

  I looked around at my little group. Ann and Ginny nodded. Reeves sighed and put his pistols back wherever he kept them hidden at. I smiled and addressed the chief again.

  “If you’ll have us we’d like to tag along. This sounds as good as most of our half-assed plans so we should probably be a part of it. You’ll still get our weapons but we’re going to be attached to them. Sound good?”

  The Chief conferred for a second with the others then said they’d love to have more fighters along. This brought up a quick conversation around if Ginny should come with us or be put somewhere safe. I reminded them Ginny had gotten the drop on all of them in this fight. They were good with that, especially since there really wasn’t anywhere safe to leave her anyway. I told them all there was just one more thing to do before we rolled out of here.

  “Somebody get this dog off of me and help me find the freakin pin she made me drop so I can put it back in the grenade before we all get blown to hell by my lack of sustainable grip strength.”

  Entry 13: Flight of the Valkyries

  We tagged along on the long dirt road behind the two pickup trucks the Indians were driving. We were headed to the closest location with helicopters which was a warehouse about seven miles away where they kept the overflow rides and did maintenance on the helicopters during the off-season. None of the Indians were mechanics. We’d asked them about that and been told they knew enough to get around the helicopter and fly it but none of them had ever worked on them that much.

  “So, we’re just going to fly two big ass helicopters up to the Hoover dam and hop out and ask for directions to wherever they’re taking prisoners these days?” Reeves was on a roll tonight. I think he was trying to cut back on the drinking and that was putting him in a bad mood. I’d rather have him surly than drunk though. At least when we would be in an automatic weapon needed kind of situation in probably under a couple of hours.

  “That’s the plan. Well, basically anyway. We’re actually going to fly low to avoid radar and land over the ridge from the dam at the casino hotel place behind them. That’s as close as they think we can get without being shot down or detected by radar. The Koreans will have the airport all kinds of secured since I’m sure it’s been under constant attack by our forces. We’ll have to play it by ear after that to try and figure out where the prisoners get taken for indoctrination.” Ann was leaving out that if we got caught all the men would be killed after a few fun-filled hours of torture. Ann and Ginny would be sent to the elusive indoctrination camp if they were captured alive. I doubted they’d let themselves be captured alive.

  With those cheerful thoughts bouncing around in everyone’s heads we continued racing along behind the heartbroken Havasupai. We’d found out the old guy was actually their chief. His name was Alo and he’d run the general store and trading post at the South Rim before all this went down. We would be taking two or three helicopters so everyone could fit comfortably and we’d be able to get most of our gear in. Our group would stick together and our pilot would be the younger Indian who had told us about his brother being killed and his sister taken. His name was Catori. He’d told us also that they’d been coming into kill as they thought we were Koreans. If it had been a little bit darker so they couldn’t have told we were white from a distance they’d have shot first and talked later.

  We got to the hangar and Alo had his guys start working on getting the helicopters rolled out of the warehouse. Each helicopter typically held a pilot and up to seven regular sized guests. They could fly to Las Vegas on single tank of gas but needed to be topped off to make it back. There was a total of twelve of us plus a dog. Alo ended up dividing us up by putting us and our weapons plus the dog into the copter with Catori and himself. Then four more would take the second copter. We loaded it down with everything additional in the Hummer and out of their trucks that we thought may be useful. We loaded down the third helicopter with jugs of helicopter fuel for the return trip. I loved the optimism there!

  Once we were gassed up and ready to go each pilot spent a few extra minutes going over the pre-flight checklist to make sure there were no issues they could detect while we still had options. If we were intercepted in the air we had no way to defend ourselves. This is why we were going with the low and fast approach and hoping that would do the trick. Once everyone was ready the pilots started flicking buttons and doing weird thing to knobs and we were aloft. I slid closer to Ann.

  “Like how I arranged all this for our date?” I asked her. Sliding her hand into mine.

  She tapped her ears like she couldn’t hear me but she was smiling and rolling her eyes. The rolling of her eyes was typically a dead giveaway that she had heard whatever I had said. I was an eye roll inducing romantic. All the romance and the fun went away when Catori took the helicopter up with no lights and started cruising through the desert at warp speed.

  I had no idea about the other helicopters but we were taking the radar avoidance to a ridiculous level. If they did pick us up they’d think they were being attacked by a gang of Mexicans in low riders. I started to say something when we suddenly jerked about twenty yards into the air to go over a ridge then fell another hundred feet to fly along a ravine. All with no lights. I was cool with stealth but that was taking it to a level I felt was hovering around suicidal.

  When my stomach had climbed back to where it was supposed to be and we’d stopped zig zagging and roller coasting for a couple of minutes I leaned back to try and talk to either Catori or Alo about how this was going. I saw the intense concentration on their faces and decided it was probably best to let them do what they were doing with minimal interference. They were used to flying people around in the air for tours during the day. The slightest hint of bad weather or turbulence or any of that and they grounded the fleet immediately to avoid any accidents.

  They were making up for all those years of safety now. I wondered if Ann was close to some Valium. Before I could even ask her, I saw her handing out some of it. I popped it like a skittle and dry swallowed it as fast as I could work up the spit. Then I closed my eyes and tried to get comfortable. The seats themselves were pretty cushioned and comfortable. This was some sort of VIP ride we were in. It wouldn’t have mattered if we were riding inside a giant marshmallow though the way Catori was bouncing us around. Daisy did not have the benefit of better living through pharmaceuticals and was obviously terrified.

>   She was huddled in between Ann and I on the floor with her head up in between us so we could both rub her. After a particularly fun little twist Catori decided to pull off I smelled a familiar odor. Alo looked back to see if maybe the helicopter was on fire and he was smelling some sort of noxious fumes. He realized the dog had taken out her hatred of this ride on the upholstery. It was going to take a lot of Fabreeze to get the rich tourists to get anywhere near this back seat ever again.

  It just kept going. At some point, I just accepted we were all going to die and went ahead and shut my eyes to try and fall asleep. I dreamt I was trying to sleep in the middle of a giant litter box that was attached to a redwood via a bungee cord and the limb kept getting blown all around. It was not a good ride. I was looking forward to getting to the end of this trip and jumping out of the copter to see whether or not we would be shot on arrival. I’d at least die with my feet on solid ground. I may possibly be vomiting while they shot me but whatever.

  Somehow, we made it. Don’t ask me how. I gave up on us surviving about ten minutes into the three-hour flight. The further we went the more ridiculous it got with the tricks Catori was pulling. I figured if they saw us on radar they would not believe anyone would be stupid enough to be flying like that and they’d just leave us alone. We landed. Catori took us out over the lake and then flared us up onto a little plateau by a set of stairs that lead up to a parking lot with what looked like around a ten to fifteen story casino hotel.

  It was pitch dark at this point so we were just going off what we could see by the moonlight. We were right down the road from the Hoover Dam. Based on how dark this casino was I figured they did not have the electricity turned back on yet. I decided to just enjoy standing on solid ground for a minute while everyone was climbing out of the helicopter and strapping on their gear.

  We’d made a decent amount of noise so I expected someone to show up and check it out. Either a Zombie or three if the Koreans had not cleared and started using this resort or a Korean patrol if they were using it and had secured the grounds. It would be pretty difficult for a sentry not to notice a helicopter landing in the parking lot. It’s not like the thing we were flying was the slightest bit quiet. The sentry was probably trying to figure out if there was supposed to be a helicopter landing there tonight and if not then who it was who had just showed up. They probably would not suspect a single helicopter landing so close to them would be any sort of attack. Who would be stupid enough to do that?

  One helicopter landing was loud enough but by the time the other two joined us there was no way anyone in the nearby vicinity would have missed all that noise. In hindsight, we should have come in with all our lights on and blaring the latest Korean pop song so they would have thought we were just some of their fellow skeezebags. We hadn’t though. Which pretty much explained the reason there was about twenty North Korean soldiers standing at the top of the plateau staring down at us over the concrete barrier dividing us.

  Entry 14: Spray and Pray

  The Koreans were yelling something down at us. It sounded like some sort of question. I couldn’t speak Korean so I decided to answer them in the internationally understood language of a fully automatic AK-47. All around me came more responses. A few in different dialects like the M-14 and M-16 but all singing the same song. We must have surprised the hell out of them. They had probably been thinking we were some important dignitaries or something flying in to check out the operation. They had not been ready to rock when they came over to see what was up.

  I kept shooting until I had to reload. I ducked back behind the helicopter to do that. I heard Indian war cries and saw a few of them bounding up the hill and jumping up and over the concrete barrier to engage more intimately with the handful of Koreans still standing. I got a new clip slammed in and ran to join in the fun. By the time I had clambered over the barrier and joined up with everybody the Koreans were all dead. I saw a couple of them had their scalps removed. Gross.

  We all formed back up. Everyone had made it except for one of the Indians who had caught a random bullet with his face. We laid him out with respect under one of the helicopters and then we started moving towards the casino. We split into two groups to give us a greater field of fire if they still had guards in the place. About halfway across the parking lot we started hearing shouts in Korean. My best guess was all the guards who had been working the night shift had come out to visit with us and gotten their heads shaved. The ones yelling now must be the ones who had been asleep and been woken up by the sound of gunfire outside.

  None of us responded and since I couldn’t see anybody to shoot we just kept moving forward. A small group of about five or six of the Koreans came out into the shadows of the covered parking area in front of the hotel. They had flashlights and started shining those around and looking for the source of all the noise. About two seconds after they flipped on the lights we tore into them. We kept moving forward, sliding into the lobby through the open front doors around the dead broken bodies bleeding out on the driveway.

  The lobby was cavernous in the dark. Every step and breath seemed to echo throughout the whole building. We moved forward, I expected lights to come on and us to start taking fire at any time. Daisy seemed happy on the pink leash Ann had her on so that meant that we probably weren’t surrounded by Zombies at least. We moved through the main area and into a lobby area with a bar that had a battery powered lantern sitting on it. Some drinks were scattered around on the bar showing what that second group had been up to when they stepped out of the main entrance nicely grouped up for us to kill.

  That meant there were probably some still sleeping in the rooms. We had neither the time nor the man power to search all the rooms in this place though. We couldn’t afford to leave any survivors behind us though se we were forced to find the time. We used the lantern to help us finish clearing out the first floor and then found the stairs leading up to the second floor. My bet was that no one would want to walk much higher than the second floor so all we would need to do would be bust into those rooms and kill whoever was in there.

  We lined up on the stairs. The Indians had none of our unit cohesion. They didn’t have the benefit of the training Ann and Reeves had provided us. For that matter, Ginny had received more military training from her grandfather than these guys had. They may be all painted up for war now but most of their background was around ferrying tourists around and managing different buildings around the reservation. I’m also pretty sure I’d read a sign saying their ancestors were peaceful and lived off agriculture for the most part. Assuming the sign was true that meant these guys didn’t even have some ancestral bad ass Indian DNA to unleash.

  Luckily, they were going off what they had seen in movies more than what their actual history was. Hence the scalping and the war paint. I was good with that. I’d much rather have them operating like fictional Indians out of a John Wayne movie than like a bunch of born again farmers getting ready to drag their tee-pees around to escape the winter or follow the buffalo. I’d rather have to hold back the rampaging bull than try and prod the reluctant cow.

  We moved up the cement corridor to the second-floor door and pushed it open. Inside was a long corridor that was lit by dim emergency lights spaced equally along the hallway. We started moving slowly down the hallway. Alo had taken the lead. He moved to the first door and tried the handle. The doors had the electronic key swipes on them for access. When there is no electricity they fail open so that people can get in and out of rooms in the event of an emergency. The door opened and Alo went in the room followed by two of his men. The door was quietly closed behind them.

  A few minutes later they emerged. Alo had a pillowcase he was wiping blood off of himself with. We continued down the hallway. Entering and killing in the first thirty rooms. Alo had lead the way into each room and allowed his people to rotate to give them all a chance to get vengeance on the Koreans. Our group understood vengeance all too well and we were ok with standing to the side and lettin
g them have this. Around the thirty-first room when Alo opened the door and went in there was a challenge issued in Korean and a blast echoed in the hallway as the Korean inside shot Alo point blank. His body tumbled backwards out into the hallway.

  The three men who had been ready to go in with him did not even slow down. They moved into the room with their tomahawks and knives out and ran for the Korean who was standing in a pair of boxers and a tank top pulling the trigger as these primordial nightmares burst in on him. He got the lead Indian who went down clutching his shoulder but the other ones whooped and jumped over their comrade to get at the skinny Korean with his pistol out. He went down in a pile of Indians thrusting their weapons into him over and over.

  They came out covered in blood. Carrying their comrade with the shoulder injury and putting together a makeshift shroud for Alo out of the bedsheets. The noise from that confrontation had probably woke others in the hallway up so now we were going to need to clear these rooms with a lot more care. We also needed a prisoner at some point if we could get the Indians to chill with the bloodlust. If they wanted to find the ones who had been taken from them then we needed some intel. I pulled Catori to the side and told him if he hoped to see his sister again we needed to capture someone alive. Preferably someone who could speak English.