by J. Thorn
“Not going to make it!” Rachel shouted over the engine noise.
I looked back and realized she was right. The bass boats were moving at a high rate of speed and would intercept us well before we made the river. I wasn’t even sure the river was a good idea at this point. No room to maneuver. No room to turn and fight. They’d be able to stay on our ass and keep pumping bullets into the boat until they hit something that was either mechanically or biologically vital. Without another thought I spun the wheel and the cruiser slowly responded to the new course I set towards the middle of the lake.
We kept turning until the bow of the big cruiser was pointed almost directly at the approaching boats. I straightened the wheel and double checked to make sure the throttle was wide open. The duct tape from the night before was still covering the gauges and I started ripping pieces off, surprised to see our indicated speed as just over 28 knots and slowly climbing. Rachel leaned into me and shouted above the engine noise and slipstream of wind.
“Should we do something to alert the people in the houseboat?”
I shook my head, eyes fixed on the approaching threat. We knew nothing of the dynamic here. The people in the houseboat could be bad guys and these were the good guys coming to take care of a problem. I wasn’t sure which group, if either, could be trusted and I was more concerned about getting us out of the middle of whatever dispute was going on. The boat was easy to pilot with one hand on the wheel and I had my rifle up and resting on the bridge railing, right hand on the pistol grip and thumb on the safety in case it was needed.
The two boats were now close enough for me to make out more details. One was bright red, the other a color of blue that can only be described as electric blue. Other than that they were almost identical, both sporting huge Mercury outboard motors that had to be around 300 horse power each. No wonder they were so fast. The men riding in the red boat seemed to be fixated on me, the blue boat steering slightly to its right to bypass our boat and be on a direct course to the houseboat. The red boat made the decision for me when the man in the bow braced himself and pointed a rifle in my direction.
“Drive, and sound the horn!” I shouted to Rachel as I slipped out of the pilot’s seat and onto my knee, rifle up and aimed over the bridge rail.
Rachel hit the button for the horn and the blast pierced the morning, carrying for miles across the water. I still didn’t know the dynamics here, but if these were good guys approaching they had made a critical mistake by pointing a rifle at me. I hoped the horn would alert the people in the houseboat and they could keep the blue boat occupied.
Settling into the stock of the rifle I flipped the selector to burst mode and briefly wished for a heavier caliber machine gun such as a good old fashioned M-60. Oh well, you fight with what you have as I’d been told over and over.
Even at almost 30 knots the cabin cruiser provided an amazingly smooth and stable ride. The bass boat on the other hand was bouncing and jarring around, sensitive to every little ripple on the lake’s surface. This was to my advantage as far as a stable aiming platform, but hitting a moving target that is moving up and down and side to side at the same time is not child’s play. They hadn’t fired on us yet, but the threat was clear and I didn’t intend to wait to see if I was just misunderstanding some poor souls who only wanted to stop by for tea.
Taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling I tracked the boat, aiming for the man in the bow. As the last of the breath left my lungs I squeezed the trigger twice, sending six rounds down range. A moment later I was rewarded with an explosion of fiberglass from the bow of the boat, inches from the man holding the rifle that was aimed at us.
He jerked away from the impact point of my bullets and raised up in perfect profile at the very front of the boat which was getting closer by the second. I quickly sent another three rounds on their way and was gratified to see him pitch over backwards in the boat. Whether hit once, twice or three times didn’t matter as he was now out of the fight.
The red boat reacted exactly as I expected. Instead of continuing closer and the remaining men opening up on us, it turned quickly to its right, presenting me with a perfect profile. Ready for the opportunity I sighted on the big outboard motor, leading it in the scope by what I hoped was the right distance, and started sending three round bursts downrange. The third burst did the trick, the top of the housing shredding into dozens of pieces as thick, black smoke began pouring out of the motor. Propulsion gone, the boat quickly came off plane and settled in the water, momentum carrying it forward a short distance until it fell adrift.
I put six more rounds into the side of the boat, just to keep their heads down and motioned for Rachel to turn and follow the blue boat. A quick magazine change and I used the binoculars to check on the boat I’d disabled. Two of the men were battling a small fire in the motor while the third watched us through a pair of binoculars. He was a sitting duck and was at least smart enough to not point his rifle in my direction.
The cruiser came about and I shifted attention to the blue boat. The boat was sitting still in the water, fifty yards from the houseboat, and all four men were standing and firing their rifles into the side of the craft. They seemed unaware of what had transpired with their buddies. Amateurs.
I stood and leaned into Rachel, telling her to bring us up behind them and cut speed when we were about two hundred yards out, but be ready to throttle up and get us moving. We covered the distance quickly, and I resumed my one knee shooting position at the bridge railing as we came at them. Rachel cut the engine to idle at the right spot and the big boat quickly settled in the water, momentum carrying us forward. At about 150 yards I opened fire, still in burst mode.
The man standing in the stern pitched forward, rifle flying out of his hands and splashing into the lake just before his body hit the water. The two men to the far left were so focused on firing at their target that they didn’t notice, but the man closest to him did. He lowered his rifle and stared at the body of his friend in the water and started to turn just as my next three rounds shredded his lower torso. He pitched forward across the pilot’s seat and lay still.
The other two men noticed now, turning and gawking at their two dead friends before spinning around in my direction. The man in the bow took the next three rounds to the chest and flipped backwards out of the boat into the water. The remaining man could have lived if he’d had the sense to put his rifle down, but he raised it and started to aim at the cabin cruiser. Three rounds sped downrange, two slamming into his chest and neck, the third punching through his skull, leaving a faint pink mist in the air for a brief moment before it settled onto the water along with his body.
Another magazine change and I stood and glassed the red boat. They had extinguished the fire and were slowly motoring away from us, a small electric trolling motor their only source of propulsion. I had no idea if the battery powering the motor was capable of getting them to shore and I frankly didn’t give a shit. They picked the fight, now they had to live with the results.
“Jesus Christ!” Rachel said, still staring at the four dead men in and around the blue boat.
I just looked at her then turned the glasses back to the houseboat in time to see one of the curtains twitch open and a pair of binoculars look back at me. Raising my hand in greeting, I kept watching until the curtains were pulled aside and a man waved back. Handing the glasses to Rachel I told her where to look and after a moment she waved back to the face in the window.
35
The man in the houseboat window turned out to be one of four men who were holed up in the small craft. They were the crew from the crashed helicopter which was an Air Force Pave Hawk, the AF variant of the Army’s Black Hawk. They weren’t in the best of shape, the pilot the worst off with a severe concussion, broken leg and crushed pelvis. We had slowly motored in after the firefight, and the cabin cruiser now lay at anchor a hundred feet from the shore the houseboat was tied to. We had crossed the open water in the speedboat, Rachel driving and me
standing behind her with my rifle at the ready.
On board the houseboat we were greeted warmly, but with caution. These were Air Force guys, and they were in the Georgia National Guard. They’d been lucky enough to have never been deployed to the Middle East which answered a lot of my questions about their poor tactical decisions. They introduced themselves and Rachel kneeled down next to the injured pilot, a Captain who looked too young to be playing pilot, to see what she could do for him.
I stood on the small deck at the stern, rifle slung but hand still on the grip, and started talking with the other three. A very young looking kid wore First Lieutenant’s bars and was the only officer other than the pilot, the other two both enlisted and wearing Tech Sergeant’s and Senior Airman Chevrons. I looked them over as they settled down, the Sergeant by far the old man of the group. He looked to be in his early 30s.
They were haggard and filthy, their flight suits smeared with mud, blood and other things I didn’t want to think about, faces unshaved and gaunt. The Airman had a dirty bandage wrapped around his head and the Lieutenant had a crude splint on his left wrist and bruising across his face. The kind of bruising that comes from getting punched in the nose. Or hitting your face on a control panel when your helicopter crashes. Each of them carried an Air Force issue side arm, but they didn’t have any other weapons.
“I’m John,” I introduced myself. “That’s Rachel in there with your Captain. She’s had medical training and will do what she can for him.” I nodded towards the interior of the boat.
“Thank you, Sir. I’m Lieutenant David Anderson, Georgia Air National Guard. This is Tech Sergeant Blake and Senior Airman Mayo. We just want to say thank you for helping us out. I thought for sure those guys were going to kill us.” I acknowledged his thanks with a nod and looked over at Sergeant Blake when he lit up a cigarette.
“Think I could bum one of those, Sarge?” I asked, mouth already watering at the thought of a smoke. I’d been without since the morning the world fell apart and probably should have stayed quit, but all things considered I’d probably die of a thousand different things before a cigarette killed me. Blake smiled and handed me the pack and a battered Zippo.
Lighting the cigarette I inhaled deeply, blew the smoke out with a satisfied smile and handed the pack and lighter back. The head rush hit a moment later and I took another long, satisfying drag off the cigarette. Fuck the Surgeon General. He was probably dead anyway.
“Thank you. That’s a damn good smoke.” I said to Blake. “Now, I have some questions and I’m sure you do to, but first I want to make something clear. Nothing personal, but we’ve not exactly had the best of experiences with survivors, and it appears you haven’t either. That said, I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings between us. I see each of you with a side arm. That’s fine, but those pistols stay holstered until further notice. Am I clear on that?”
To drive home my point I flicked the rifle’s safety lever off with my thumb. The click was clearly audible and three sets of eyes got very large. I looked at each of them in turn and didn’t see anything in their eyes that concerned me at the moment.
“We understand,” the Lieutenant spoke up. “We aren’t looking for any trouble, just trying to survive.”
“Fair enough.” I said, clicking the lever back into the SAFE position.
Rachel came out the back door and paused, picking up on the stressful dynamic of the moment, then walked over to me and took the cigarette out of my hand. She took a long drag, closed her eyes and held it for a moment before smiling and exhaling through her nose.
“God, that’s good,” She said. “I’m going to run back and get some supplies. He’s in bad shape and there’s not much more I can do with what we have than make him comfortable. I’ve got the stuff I found in that house that should help him.” Rachel was referring to the heroin she’d found in the house she’d been held captive in.
“OK. Take Mayo here with you,” I answered, gesturing to the young Airman. “Airman, when you get to that boat you will go straight to the flying bridge. There’s a pair of binoculars up there and you will use them to keep watch. If you see anything approaching, another boat, infected, whatever, you sound that horn. Understood?” I held his eyes with mine, waiting for an answer.
“Yes, sir.” He replied and got to his feet to climb into the speedboat with Rachel.
“Oh, and Airman,” I stopped him. “There’s a nasty tempered dog on that boat. He’ll let you on the bridge as long as Rachel here is with you, but… if you try to leave the bridge without one of us on the boat he’ll likely bite you balls off and have them for breakfast.”
Mayo’s eyes went wide and he looked back and forth between his Lieutenant, me and Rachel. When no one smiled he got the message. “Yes, sir. Got it.”
He scrambled into the speedboat with Rachel already at the wheel, untied the line holding it to the houseboat and they were gone.
“He’s a good kid,” Blake said. “He won’t mess with anything.”
I grinned and looked over my shoulder and watched Rachel maneuver the speedboat to the stern of the cruiser where Mayo grabbed a line out of the water and tied the two boats together. Dog stood at the stern rail, tail down and ears up and Mayo didn’t make another move until Rachel boarded the boat and motioned him to follow.
“So gentlemen. How did you wind up in this little corner of paradise?” I asked.
36
Lieutenant David Anderson hung up the phone, grumbling to himself at the emergency call in. Three months out of college he was honoring his commitment to the National Guard in exchange for four years of tuition having been paid in full. He didn’t mind the National Guard, especially since things were winding down in Iraq and Afghanistan and it was very unlikely that he’d get deployed. However, he had just walked in the door of his cramped apartment and had planned to grab a shower before meeting Melanie for a drink.
Melanie was a student at Georgia Tech, in her senior year, and was the most beautiful girl Anderson had ever seen. Tall, with a runner’s body and long blonde hair, he was still amazed that she had ever agreed to go out with him two weeks ago. This was now their third date, and he was hoping he was reading the signs right and she would be coming home with him tonight. Damn call ups, he fumed, almost throwing his cell phone against the wall. Instead, he calmed himself and called Melanie and canceled their date. To his surprise she asked him if he would call her as soon as he was free so they could go have their drink. He agreed and, mood lightened, set about gathering what he needed to take to the Guard base.
Half an hour later he sat in a briefing room with Captain Gerry Helm, the pilot of the Pave Hawk to which Anderson was assigned. Their crew chief, Tech Sergeant Blake and a young Senior Airman named Mayo sat in the row of chairs behind them. At the back of the room were four men wearing a mishmash of civilian and military issue clothing. All had thick beards, three with long hair to their shoulders and the fourth with a shaved head.
Anderson didn’t need to be told they were Special Forces operators. No one other than SF walked around any military installation looking like a dirt bag, or as Captain Helm put it, ‘Rejects from the Hell’s Angels’. He had seen SF Operators before, but never worked with them. They were almost a mythical creature to someone like him, and a thrill of excitement ran through him at the thought of adding a SF operation to his military resume. He snapped out of his reverie when Captain Helm shot to his feet and yelled, “Attention!”
He was on his feet, ramrod straight in the blink of an eye, as were Blake and Mayo. From the back of the room he could hear shuffling about and chairs being repositioned as the SF guys got to their feet in their own sweet time. Anderson kept his eyes straight ahead, focused on the US flag standing at the front of the room. In his peripheral vision he could see Colonel Hamm, his air wing commander, accompanied by an Army Colonel, stride into the room and take up position between the US and Air Force flags.
“As you were,” Colonel Hamm rumbled in a bar
itone voice that always made Anderson think of a gravel crusher. Hamm was an early middle aged black man who in his prime had been a star linebacker for Air Force, and he still had the thick chest and arms from the football days of his youth. As large and intimidating as he was, he didn’t compare to the Army Colonel standing next to him. The man was a shade over six feet tall and obviously spent a great deal of time in the gym. His shoulders and back strained the ACU blouse he wore and his biceps threatened to rip through the sleeves. He was one of the ugliest human beings that Anderson had ever seen, and not anyone he’d want to have pissed off at him.
After the men settled into their seats, Hamm spoke briefly. “Gentlemen, this is a classified top secret briefing for an equally classified operation. It is not to be discussed with anyone not present in this room. Clear?”
The four Air Force personnel immediately answered with an affirmative, but the back of the room was silent. The SF guys didn’t do anything that wasn’t classified at least top secret and this was old hat to them. Anderson wasn’t even sure they were paying attention, but he wasn’t about to turn around to find out. Hamm glared at the back of the room for a moment, then introduced the Army Colonel.
“With me is Colonel Flowers from Army Special Operations. This mission shall be under his operational control, and he will brief you on what you need to know.”
Hamm stepped aside but the larger Flowers didn’t feel the need to move from where he already stood. Flowers? Anderson suspected it had been a very long time, if ever, that anyone had made a crack about the Colonel’s name. Looking at him standing with his feet wide apart and hands clasped behind his back, Anderson felt a shiver of uncertainty as the man looked at each of the Air Force personnel in turn before speaking.
