That was the first chance that I had to look the boy over. He was tanned and lean, as well as dirty. You couldn’t really tell where the tan began and the dirt ended. His hair was down to his shoulders and had obviously been cut with a knife. Probably the same combat knife that I took away from him. He had on a pair of denim pants that were too short and had seen better days. That pair of pants and the belt that held up the combat knife was the only thing the kid was wearing. Mike looked at Charlie and said “two cakes with jelly please.” Charlie opened his pack pulled out a couple of the biscuits that pass as cakes for us and smeared some of the flavored protein jelly on them. Mike took a bite of one and handed the rest to the boy. He took it hesitantly, sniffed it a couple of times, touched his tongue to it and then popped the whole thing in his mouth. We watched him eat. I could count every rib on this poor kid.
He didn’t look unhealthy, just skinny. I realized that my first, hurried, estimate of his age was probably wrong. I had no way to gauge the age of this kid. He could have been six or twelve. There wasn’t any facial or armpit hair starting yet, but he was well muscled with a strong set to his chin that said he wasn’t scared. This kid had been in tight spots before and you could tell that he wasn’t scared of anything we could do. His environment had done worse to him than anything we could.
Mike tried to talk to him. She asked him his name with no response. She told him not to be scared, that we weren’t going to hurt him. He didn’t even look up, until Mike repeated the same questions in Spanish. You could see him flinch, Mike stopped immediately, but the boy was shook. She started talking to him in English again, telling him that he shouldn’t be afraid, that we weren’t here to hurt him or take his food. You could see him start to relax. It was obvious that he understood, he just wasn’t going to talk. He did keep eyeing the other cake and Mike finally handed it to him.
As he was eating the cake, Mike pulled out the tube of jelly and made a big show of how to unscrew the cap, squeezed a bit out on her finger and then licked it off. She then screwed the lid back on and set it on the ground in front of her.
Mike said, “Ray, bring me his knife.” I started to argue, but I got the “Mike” look. The one that says “Shut up, I know what I’m doing.” So I walked over and handed her the knife. I noticed the kid watching me real closely, but kind of dismissed it, after all I was the one who held him down with my arm across his throat. Mike stood him up on his feet, put the tube of jelly in his right hand, the knife back in the sheath and gave him a little push back the way he had come. He hesitated, turned toward me, pointed to the US flag on the shoulder of my jumpsuit, said “Home of the brave”, took off across the pavement and disappeared into the grass.
We were stunned, I almost lost it. I heard Charlie say “shit.” I turned around and could see Russ wiping his eyes. Mike looked at us and said “what the hell’s wrong with you guys?”, but could see something was up. I couldn’t say anything, I walked back around the end of the Voodoo so that no one would see me crying. After a few seconds Mike followed, but didn’t say anything, just stood there and looked at me. It took me a minute or two, but I looked over at her and said “that’s from the last line of the Star Spangled Banner, the national anthem of the United States.”
Chapter 4
I stood there in the shade of the Voodoo trying to get my shit together while Mike looked on quietly. She understood. She understood that nothing she could say would make it better. I knew that things were probably much worse for her people. Mike was from Bucarest, the capital of Romania, about 300 miles from Istanbul. Istanbul had taken a direct hit. St. Louis was at least 750 miles from Denver and Denver had taken an airburst, a bit more fall out, but without the shock wave that Bucarest had probably gotten.
I looked at her and said “we better get moving, we don’t have all day.” She nodded and we walked back around to the other side of the Voodoo and said “Let’s go, Nemesis isn’t going to fix itself.” Russ and Charlie just nodded and shouldered their packs. I watched Mike scanning the edges of the grass as we were getting ready to move out. As we stepped back out on the street Mike said “Keep your eyes open. Don’t let your emotions dictate when to shoot or not. Remember, we’ve got to get Prometheus back, we’ve got a lot of people depending on us.”
The last hundred yards to the terminal building were uneventful. We bypassed the first building, which appeared to be offices and moved on to the west to the first hanger. The first two hangers were filled with light duty planes. There was a Cessna Skyhawk just inside the first door, but nothing that we could use. The next 3 hangers were the same. Most of the planes were in good shape. I figured that with some gas and a couple of hours that I could have taken off in at least one of them. But they weren’t what we needed. We needed something like a Cessna Citation class jet, or a Lear Bombardier Challenger class jet with a working set of hydraulics and a usable front tire that wasn’t too dry-rotted. They really weren’t heavy enough for Nemesis to land with, but it might work for take off.
We went through four hangers and were disappointed every time. The fifth hanger showed some promise, there was a Cessna Mustang just inside the door, but there was nothing else in the hanger any bigger. We moved on through the hanger hoping to see some spare parts that we could use. All of a sudden Charlie took off in a beeline for the west side of the hanger. Didn’t say a word, just took off. Russ looked at me with a raised eyebrow but Mike stood there just watching him. After a couple of seconds Charlie said “Hey, guys I found a set of torches and I think the tanks still have oxy-acetylene in them.” We moved over closer to take a look.
There was a striker hanging from a chain from the handle of the dolly holding the tanks. Charlie adjusted the valves on the tanks and the torch and hit the striker before anyone could say anything. That torch sputtered a few times and then fired off bright yellow. Charlie adjusted it down to a clear blue flame and then turned it off. “A little dusty and the hoses aren’t in the best of shape, but I think there’s quite a bit of juice left in the tanks and it looks like there’s at least one set of refills here.” Sure enough there were several sets of tanks sitting there. One of the green and one of the orange tanks had a cap with a lead seal still hanging from it.
Russ looked at the tanks and then at Charlie and said “I don’t see what good these are going to do us if we don’t have anything to weld in place. It looks like Nemesis will stay here regardless.” We all stood there for a second until Charlie looked at him and said “Kid, ever see a seaplane land and take off? Well, if we have to, were going to do a little like that seaplane. We’re going to put a ski underneath that front end, get that baby up to about 300 kph and lift her into orbit!”
I looked at Charlie like he was crazy and said “I think we’d better take a close look at Prometheus and hope that we can get her up. Otherwise, we’re gonna be down here hunting dogs with crossbows like the rest of the natives.” Mike looked at me and said “No Charlie’s got a point. We don’t have to land her again. Once we make orbit, we can drop into one of the hanger bays on any of the stations. It doesn’t matter if the nose gear comes off, as long as we can get up speed to get her off the ground!” I was skeptical, but I was going to keep my mouth shut. It was alright for a backup plan, but if Prometheus could fly that was our way home. Not some farfetched scheme that would end with Nemesis in flames and all of us dead.
We started out trying to figure out how to get the extra tanks back to Nemesis. The only real problem was that there was only one dolly for the tanks. None of us relished trying to carry or roll those tanks all the way back the way we had come, so we split up into twos and went back through the other hangers looking for a way to transport the tanks. Russ and I found a dolly in the next hanger, but it wasn’t a tank dolly and we had no way to strap the tanks down. By the time we had gotten back to the other hanger Mike & Charlie had found another set of torches at the other end of the hanger with empty tanks. They had un-strapped the tanks and were in the process of loading the ful
l ones onto it when we got back.
Mike said, “We sleep here tonight.” No one argued. It had been a long day. Hard to realize, but we had been back on Earth less than 48 hours. Mike told me to do a four by four with Charlie. A four by four is a recon that is set up for urban conditions. Two men recon all four corners of the building you were in. You looked for weaknesses and both inside and out. You determined which part of the building was the most defensible and that’s where you set up camp. The rest of the hanger turned out to be locked up tight. I guess that whoever was parking the private jets in here only unlocked one door at a time.
We did find a small office in the back. Two desks, a television, a radio, a coffee pot, everything you expected to find in an office for the guys who kept the planes flying, including someone sitting in the chair. He’d been dead for years. Nothing but a husk with a mechanic’s uniform on. The gun was still in his hand. I didn’t see any holes in his skull, or blood stains on his uniform or any other sign that he had shot himself. I say he because I could still read the name plate on the desk, Frank West. It seems that Frank couldn’t leave the hanger. I stepped up and pulled the revolver out of Frank’s hand, it turned out to be a .357 magnum with a full 6 rounds in the cylinder. I looked at Charlie and said “This may come in handy, we should look around to see what else we can come up with.”
We came up with a few things. Charlie found a can of coffee that hadn’t been opened and a pint of Jack Daniels that had. I found 2 packs of camels, one had been opened and one hadn’t and two cigars in a glass tubes that said “It’s a boy” on the outside, along with about half a box of rounds of the .357. I guess technically we were looting, but I think that Frank would have wanted to share a drink and cigarette with some fellow flyboys. We moved on out of the office and found a back door outside door. It was hand bolted on the inside but not locked. I tested it to be sure that it was a legitimate way out in case of need and that nothing could come in that way.
I stepped outside and checked to see if it could be unbolted from the outside. Everything tested solid. Russ opened it back up and stepped out so that we could check out the back corners of the building. Nothing back there, not even animal sign, I guess that an airport wasn’t the best place for wildlife to find things to eat. We went back in, re-latched the door and headed back to the others.
When we got back to the front of the hanger Mike had already found enough wood for a good fire and Russ had pulled the seats out of the Cessna and unfolded them into beds. The hanger was big enough that we could build a fire inside and still get airflow. They had positioned the fire close enough to the door that we could see anything that may come in and yet still have room around it if we needed to get out in a hurry. Someone had put some food on the edge of the fire to get it warming. We could have eaten it cold but something about an open fire made the food taste better somehow. Charlie had already set down the coffee and a huge debate ensued about the final disposition of such. We finally agreed that it would be best not to open it. If it were open it would be that much harder to get the rest of the can into orbit safely. It would be selfish of us to open the can here and jeopardize its safe return, when there were several thousand people topside who would have a great appreciation for a cup of real coffee. There was also the minor fact that a single cup of coffee could buy any of us steaks for a week. We decided that the best use of the Jack Daniels, cigarettes and 357 may be something that we figured out later. No one wanted to take a 30 year old 357 and 20 plus year old rounds back into orbit. Best leave those on the ground, but we all knew that the cigarettes and Jack were probably gonna go back with us.
It was our second night on the ground, Mike had just pulled out her flask of vodka and poured a cup for Charlie and I, when I remembered the cigar. I looked at Charlie and said “You know it’s really hard to have a drink without a smoke”, reached into my pocket and pulled out one of the cigars. It was a cheap cigar and I didn’t even smoke, but it was the best cigar that I had ever had, we passed it around before lighting it.
While Charlie and I had our drink we talked about things that we missed. With me it was fishing and scotch, not necessarily in that order. Charlie missed the muscle cars. Anything with a motor could be fixed by him and would run better after he fixed it than before it was broken. Come to find out with Mike it was food, “drob” specifically, Mike explained that “drob” was a Romanian dish made from a cooked mix of intestines, meat and fresh vegetables, mainly green onion, served with cottage cheese. It seems that it was the favorite dish of her family during the holidays, kind of sounded like haggis to me. Sounded pretty appetizing compared to the drek that we had been eating.
Russ had been quiet when Charlie looked over at him and said “What about you Russell? What do you miss the most?” Russ sat there for a second, then replied with “my kids, my wife. The stupid neighbor that would mow his yard at 6 am on Sunday morning, the paper boy who always dropped the paper into the hedges.” Russ was the only one of us who had been married. I hadn’t known about the kids. After all, he could have only been about 26 when it happened. We didn’t say anything. There was nothing that we could say that would make anything better. We had all lost something. None of us had spoke about our families other than in an indirect reference.
We sat there for a few more minutes and stared into the fire. Mike finally broke the silence by asking Russ if he wanted to draw straws for first watch. Russ said “Nah, I’ll take it, you go ahead and get some sleep”. We maneuvered the seats around so that they formed a horseshoe shape around the fire and settled in. Russ moved off into the darkness so that he wouldn’t be night blinded by the fire, Mike walked over to Charlie, took her index finger, touched his lips with it and then her temple and then looked at me. Charlie and I got the point. Russ was having a real tough time with this. We were supposed to watch what we said. We didn’t need him going over the edge, we needed every one of us on the top of the game. No more extra baggage than necessary.
I held up one finger to my eye, pointed toward Russ and then bent it in the middle, then pointed to Charlie and did the same. Essentially I had just told Mike that I would keep an eye on Russ for the first half of his watch and that Charlie would watch him for the second half. The seats were within reach of each other, so I positioned my head so that I could reach out and hit Charlie on the foot when it was his turn to keep an eye on Russ.
I lay there with my hand on that CZ-40 for a little over 2 hours. Russ was handling himself pretty well, sitting stock still with his eyes towards the door. Not moving, not nodding, just watching the door. Things seemed quiet. I hadn’t heard any noises or seen any movement from around the door. Of course I had the fire between me and the door, but I had positioned myself so that the fire wasn’t in a direct line between me and it. I reached my hand out and nudged Charlie and felt his foot tap my hand. Charlie was awake. I tapped back and closed my eyes and lay there thinking about all the things we had lost.
I awoke instantly to the sound of gunfire from an M-16. Combat instincts kicked in and I rolled off the backside of the Cessna seat with it between the fire and I before I had a chance to realize what was going on. The CZ- 40 was still in my hand from when I had fallen asleep. Charlie and Mike had rolled behind the seats and Charlie had already pulled a few rounds off on his 40. I saw one of those big dogs fall in bloody heap just inside the door. I don’t know if it was Russ or Charlie who hit it but it didn’t matter, what mattered was that there were two more coming in right on the first one’s ass.
I pumped off ten rounds from the 40 just as fast as I could pull the trigger with Charlie matching me round for round. I saw the second dog drop just as Russ’ 16 stopped chattering, I don’t know if it was from a jam or if he had already emptied his clip. The third dog’s first leap had put it at the edge of the fire. I was changing clips and rolling to my right as it made the leap over the fire. I knew that Charlie was out of rounds, but was hoping that he had already changed his clip out. I was in the process of dropping th
e 40 and reaching for my combat knife when suddenly I heard three small explosions to my left. A small explosion was the only way to describe it. Mike had broke out the 12 gauge riot gun and pumped three rounds into that dog at short range. It collapsed in a heap on the fire. The smell of burning fur was sickening. The whole attack had lasted less than twenty seconds from start to finish.
It took several minutes for my pulse to slow down and I knew that I wasn’t going to come down off the combat high anytime soon. I’m sure that everyone else felt it too, but everybody reacts differently. Mike, Charlie and I had all felt it before, but this was probably the first time for Russ. I still had my eyes glued to the door with the knife clenched in one hand while reaching for my handgun with the other, Mike was already reloading the 12 gauge and Charlie had the 40 pointed at the door marksman style. When I looked over at Russ, he was just standing there, not moving, holding the 16 out in front of him. I looked at Mike and nodded towards him. The first time can be rough. You find out that your body reacts before you can think or that you would do things that you never realized that you were capable of.
Mike looked at me and said “Russ you and Charlie cover the door.” Russ looked over with a start and then seemed to loosen up. He dropped the clip out of the 16 and popped a new one in. Mike nodded towards me and said “Let’s get that thing out of the fire.” I sheathed the knife, put a new clip in the 40, chambered a round before I holstered it, and walked toward the fire. I hadn’t realized how big these things were. The one that we had hit with Nemesis must have been young, or this one was especially large. This thing was well over six feet long and could have stood and looked me almost in the eye. Mike and I walked around the fire and grabbed it by the hind legs. It must have weighed 300 pounds. We pulled it out of the fire and rolled it off to one side to put the fire out. Mike pulled out her flashlight and started doing a careful exam of the thing.
The End of the Beginning Page 4
