Anvil

by Dirk Patton

  Looking around nervously, the soldiers glanced at each other. As Irina continued to scream and plead, the point man finally walked forward. He stood over her for a moment before sinking to a knee and reaching out to touch her shoulder. She was sobbing now, and even though I didn’t know what she was saying I could tell she was putting on a masterful performance.

  Irina reached up and grasped the man’s arm, pulling him closer. She was speaking fast, in between sobs, and finally began pointing in the direction Katie had gone. The soldier looked where she pointed, then glanced back at the rest of his squad. Slowly, the two from the middle of the formation began walking forward.

  “Good girl,” I mumbled, amazed at what Irina was doing.

  But there was still the fourth Spetsnaz. The rear guard. He wasn’t a fool, and he wasn’t moving. He had stopped about thirty yards away from where Irina lay crying in the snow. Just like he should, he was scanning the surrounding terrain. He wasn’t watching the distraction of a half naked, blood covered woman. The other two had reached the commotion now and stood watching their comrade try to calm the hysterical stranger.

  They stood close together, one of them with his back to me, watching as she wailed and grasped onto the man on the ground with her. Irina had given me an opportunity. I could be out the door and on the Spetsnaz in one step. And she appeared to have a death grip on the point man’s arm. She intended to hold him back from the fight. I was confident I could take the other two with the Kukri, but the fucker on rear guard wasn’t budging.

  And he was too far away. Sure, I could charge out of the cave and quickly dispatch two of them while Irina occupied the third, but then what. The guy on rear guard would just shoot me before his buddies even hit the ground. I needed him closer.

  Irina recognized this and amped up her wails and screams, writhing on the ground in a good imitation of pain. The man wasn’t budging and she somehow kicked it up another notch, arching her back and screaming at the top of her lungs. One of the other soldiers knelt on the far side of her, trying to comfort her.

  Finally, the fourth man, who’s attention was now drawn to Irina’s wails, took a step closer. He paused, scanned through a full three hundred and sixty degrees, then moved a few more steps. He was either very nervous or a combat vet. And if the woman that had so suddenly appeared hadn’t been speaking in Russian I don’t think he would have been drawn in.

  Slowly, he kept moving closer. Only a few steps before he’d stop and scan all around, but the distance was closing. Once he was inside five yards, Irina twisted onto her side and began emphatically pointing in a direction away from the bluff.

  As she shook her arm she screamed a few Russian curses I did recognize, then I thought I heard my name. Four heads turned to look in the direction she was pointing.

  9

  I had been waiting for this moment, legs coiled beneath me, Kukri tightly gripped in my right hand. As their attention turned away from the bluff I launched myself through into the open air. On all fours to squeeze through the low door, I pumped with my legs to keep forward momentum. Pushing off with my hands, I came into a crouch as I charged forward.

  Irina saw my movement and screamed louder to cover the sound of my approach. As she screamed she gripped the upper arm of each kneeling man and pulled them towards her. The rear guard soldier looked down at her and saw me from the corner of his eye.

  Everything slowed as I took my first full step. Suddenly I went from a normal world to a super high definition, slow motion world. Colors were vivid, details were incredibly sharp and only the sounds I was focused on could be heard.

  The soldier who saw me snapped his head around, and as I stretched to cover the last of the open ground between us I clearly saw the stubble on his chin, the dirt ground into his brow and even the color of his eyes. The Kukri was up, held high for a killing slash as I came even with the Spetsnaz who had stood over Irina with his back to me.

  With all of the power in my shoulder and arm, I swung the heavy blade. There was a moment of resistance when it met the side of his neck, then it was free. Continuing the swing, I noted several drops of blood fly off the tip and strike the rear guard soldier on the face. Irina was still screaming, now struggling with the two soldiers who were trying to respond to my attack.

  In front of me the man was swinging his rifle up, not to shoot me, but to block the strike of my weapon. He raised it just in time, the steel of the Kukri ringing loudly on the barrel, then we collided and tumbled to the ground. Behind, I could hear the struggle Irina was engaged in, but I had my hands full.

  We rolled, each of us gripping the other in an attempt to get the upper hand. The thing about hand to hand combat is that it is brutal. There’s no other word for it. Between two trained fighters it is fast, violent and almost always fatal for one. More often than you’d think, it’s fatal for both as there is typically a lot of damage inflicted by both parties.

  I still had the blade and he was trying to control my arm as I threw punches and searched for leverage. He was strong as hell, equaling the power I was able to summon and the Kukri wasn’t moving one inch closer to his flesh. Knees pounded into my back as I shifted my weight and crashed my forehead into his face.

  Two fingers on my left hand snapped as he found a momentary purchase and twisted them savagely to the side. Yanking my hand away, I twisted as he reached to get a grip on the back of my neck. He moved with me and I wound up on my back as he rolled his full body weight onto my chest. I tried to roll him off, but he countered the move and slipped a hand past my defenses and locked it on my throat, pressing with everything he had.

  I pounded on the side of his head and clapped his ear with an open palm, trying to rupture his ear drum. He seemed impervious to pain. Unable to breathe, I began bucking, trying to throw him off or even loosen the pressure on my windpipe long enough to gasp for air. He wasn’t budging, his legs now in a hold around my hips, pinning me. My hand with the Kukri was still in an iron grip and blows with my damaged hand were ineffective. He looked into my eyes and grinned with bloody teeth as he continued to lean pressure into my throat.

  Blood pounded in my ears and my vision was starting to tunnel as the big Russian kept squeezing my throat. I hit him in the face twice, feeling his nose break with the second blow, but the pressure didn’t lessen by even an ounce. Grasping, I tried to work my fingers beneath his, failing to overcome the strength in his hand.

  Feeling myself losing consciousness, I flailed out with my hand, hoping to feel a stick or rock or anything I could use for a weapon. There was nothing within reach other than snow on top of smooth sand. Still struggling, but losing strength as I felt consciousness waning, the vicious pressure on my throat was suddenly gone.

  Taking a ragged breath, I turned my head in the direction the Russian had gone, levering up on my elbows. He lay on his back trying to fend off slashing blows as Katie tore at his neck and head. Frozen in shock for a moment, I shook off the surprise and rolled, plunging the Kukri into the side of his exposed neck.

  Katie leapt away from him, coming into a crouch and watching me. I wanted to keep looking at her, but the sounds of fighting from behind reminded me there were still two more Spetsnaz that I hadn’t dealt with. Tearing my attention off of my wife, I stood and dashed to where Irina and Rachel were struggling with the last soldier.

  One of the two lay on the ground, his head deformed from a savage blow. The last guy was trying to shake Rachel off his back. She had leapt on, wrapping her arms around his neck and long legs around his waist. Irina was pounding on him with her fists to little effect. As I rushed to help he delivered a solid punch to the side of her head that sent her sprawling.

  Reaching over his head he grabbed Rachel’s hair in both fists before falling backwards and crushing her against the ground with his full body weight. I heard the air whistle out of her lungs as I arrived. The Russian’s eyes went big when he saw me, knowing he was done.

  I hit him twice in the face, hard, not wanting to
stab or slash with the Kukri and risk injuring Rachel. His eyes lost focus after the second blow and I grabbed the front of his vest and hauled him up and off of her. He reached for me, trying to wrap me up. My blade was already turned in the right direction and I buried it in his body, sliced to make sure he was done, then pushed his corpse away.

  Pausing, I looked down at Rachel as she gulped air like a fish out of water, trying to get her lungs working again. Irina was unconscious, having been knocked out by the blow she’d received. With no urgent injuries or threats I turned to face Katie.

  She still watched me, standing several yards beyond the body of the Russian she’d saved me from. Saved me! Again! She was still in there! But I couldn’t see any sign of the woman I loved in the horrid red eyes that stared back at me. There was only cold aggression and anger.

  “What the hell?” Rachel mumbled as she regained her feet and came to stand beside me. She placed her hand on my shoulder in an unconscious gesture of fear.

  When she touched me, Katie took two steps forward and snarled. After a moment she leapt over the corpse and dropped into a crouch, still snarling as she prepared to leap at Rachel. I moved between the two women without even thinking.

  “No!” I said to Katie, dropping the Kukri into the snow and holding both hands up, palms towards her.

  She paused, the snarl dying out. Slowly she relaxed her posture and returned to a standing position.

  “Can you understand me?” I asked in a gentle voice, afraid of provoking her or scaring her off.

  She remained motionless, only her eyes giving away her anger at Rachel. They continually flicked back and forth between the two of us. Perhaps I was reading too much into the moment, but for me this confirmed that there was still some part of my wife buried under the infection induced rage. The jealous part. That in combination with her having attacked the Russian to save me strengthened my hope that I hadn’t completely lost her.

  “Please come with me,” I said. “I’ll take you someplace safe where there’s help. Please. Trust me. I’ll get you help.”

  I had slowly moved forward as I spoke, maintaining eye contact with her. As I drew closer I thought I could see a war of emotions taking place, but maybe that was only what I wanted to see. When I came to a stop we were separated by no more than five feet. Katie’s posture was guarded, but she didn’t look like she was about to attack.

  “It will be alright,” I whispered to her. “Just trust me and everything will be ok.”

  As I pleaded with Katie, there were tears running down my face. I didn’t know if I really believed what I was saying. All I knew was there was nothing I wouldn’t do to get her back. Carefully, I took another half a step and very slowly raised my arm, extending my hand towards her.

  “Take my hand,” I said. “Please, honey. Take my hand. Let me help.”

  We stood like that for close to a minute, my hand extended to within easy reach for her as my tears flowed. She stared back at me, some of the anger in her eyes dissipating. She tilted her head to the side and lowered her gaze to my offered hand and for a moment I thought she was going to reach out and take it. Thought I was getting through to her.

  But suddenly her head snapped up to look at the horizon. Time froze for several heartbeats, then she looked me in the eye and screamed before turning and racing away. I was rooted to the spot, watching her disappear over a low hill, not processing what Rachel was shouting. She finally grabbed my arm and tugged hard enough to get my attention.

  “Rotors!” She yelled in my face. “Helicopters coming!”

  10

  Rachel’s warning snapped me back to the moment and got me moving. I took half a second to listen, identifying the rotor noise as a Russian Hind. It was approaching from the north, probably one of the helicopters assigned to a search orbit, but it was possible one of the dead Spetsnaz had managed to get an emergency call out over the radio and it was responding.

  Either way, we were pretty much fucked if it flew within visual range. Four dead Russians lay on the ground, three of them having been slashed open with my Kukri. Their bright red blood formed large, neon red stains on the white blanket of snow. There was no way I had time to conceal the bodies and evidence of the fight.

  Dashing to Irina’s still unconscious form, I bent, grabbed her wrists and cursed at the stab of pain from my broken fingers. Ignoring it, I yanked and pulled her limp form up and over my shoulder. As I was doing this, the thrum of the approaching rotor steadily grew in volume. I was out of time.

  Straightening with the burden, I turned as a Havoc attack helicopter popped up over a low hill. The pilot was apparently surprised to see us as it took him a moment to react and swing the aircraft around into a hover. He held in the air, three hundred yards away and maybe five hundred feet above the ground.

  “Do we run?” Rachel asked from beside me.

  “We can’t outrun him,” I said, anger and frustration churning in my gut.

  We were caught. Completely. It was daylight. We were in unforgiving terrain with few places to hide and certainly none that could protect us from the Havoc’s weapons. We stood out like a beacon against the snow on the ground. I was out of rabbits.

  “What do we do?” Rachel asked, grabbing my arm. “There has to be something.”

  “Wait for the right moment…” I started to say, pausing when the sound of another aircraft reached my ears.

  It was a jet, coming fast from the southeast. Turning my head, I spotted it and didn’t understand what I was seeing. So far the Russians had only flown aircraft of their own design and manufacture. Despite hundreds, if not thousands, of American military aircraft available to them, I had yet to see them put one into operation.

  But here was an A-10 Warthog barreling down on the scene, only a few hundred feet in the air. The Warthog is the red-headed stepchild of the Air Force because it’s not a sleek, sexy fighter or bomber with more gadgets than James Bond would know what to do with. The Air Force brass has hated it for decades, repeatedly trying to kill or replace it. But other than his own rifle, there’s nothing a ground combat soldier loves more than seeing a Warthog overhead. His chances of survival just went way up.

  Designed to be a close support weapons platform for ground troops, and a tank buster to counter Soviet armor during the Cold War, it flies low and slow. And it can effectively obliterate anything on the ground with its 30 mm Gatling Gun firing depleted uranium slugs. When it fires it sounds like the very fabric of the Earth is being ripped apart, and at 4,200 rounds per minute it is absolutely devastating.

  But why the hell were the Russians flying one of these? They weren’t designed for, nor very effective at air to air combat. They were a ground attack weapon, and there wasn’t anything of the American military left on the ground. Maybe I should be flattered that it had been brought out just for me.

  The A-10 bobbed up and down as the pilot maintained a constant altitude above the rolling terrain. It was definitely coming in at attack velocity and when I realized it was staying in the Havoc’s blind spot a light bulb finally came on.

  “Down!” I shouted to Rachel as I dumped Irina and fell across her inert form.

  A heartbeat later the ripping sound of the Warthog’s gun sounded for perhaps a second. My head was turned towards the Russian helicopter, watching, and almost instantly it was torn in half by the heavy slugs from the A-10’s gun. The main rotor was sheared off to spin away, the crippled aircraft falling in several large pieces.

  Before it struck the ground, it erupted in a massive explosion as the ruptured fuel tanks ignited. A wave of searing heat blasted across us as the pressure wave pummeled us with snow, sand, small rocks and other debris. A moment later the Warthog screamed overhead at no more than three hundred feet, banking sharply and gaining altitude.

  It flew out of sight for several seconds, then the sound of more weapons being fired came to us. There was another explosion in the distance, a thick column of black smoke soon staining the grey sky to mark wha
tever else the pilot had just destroyed.

  Slowly I climbed to my feet, tracking the plane by sound until it came back into sight due south. It was approaching, but at a much slower pace this time. Passing a few hundred yards to the side so the pilot would have a good view of us, it waggled its wings before gaining altitude and going into a broad orbit of the area.

  “What the hell just happened?” Rachel asked, climbing to her feet and brushing herself off.

  “I think the good guys just showed up,” I said, tearing my eyes away from the orbiting aircraft and kneeling beside Irina.

  Her pulse was strong when I pressed my fingers to her neck and she was breathing. She had just been knocked out and would hopefully regain consciousness soon. The self inflicted scalp wound was still oozing blood and her naked upper body was completely covered in the stuff.

  “Grab her clothes out of the cave,” I said to Rachel.

  A few minutes later, Rachel and I had finished dressing Irina. No matter how Russian or how tough she was, bare skin in this weather wasn’t a good idea. As we had worked I kept a sharp ear out, noting our guardian angel was still orbiting. I didn’t want to say anything and get Rachel’s hopes up, but I suspected he was keeping watch over us until a rescue helo could arrive.

  But who the hell were these guys and where had they come from?

  11

  “Son of a bitch!” I exclaimed when Rachel pulled the first of my two broken fingers back into place.

  “Don’t be a pussy,” she said, holding my hand tightly to prevent me from yanking it away. “Now quit whining and hold still. One more to go.”

  “You can be a real bitch. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “No, I don’t think you have. Are you sure you want to be calling me names right now?” She smiled and snapped the second finger back straight.