I tried to act like I hadn't noticed it, but body language is a dead giveaway, especially to wild animals. I wasn't just talking about whatever was stalking us, but these kids had senses and reflexes that were more finely tuned than most wild predators and they were twice as deadly. I was just glad that they were on my side.
I strolled down the middle of the road trying to look ahead while keeping my eyes on the edge of the road with my peripheral vision. I could feel the cold sweat running down my back. I was being hunted. I had only felt that once before in my life and that was on the streets of Baghdad one night when I was someplace that I wasn't supposed to be. That one got ugly and I almost didn't get out alive. I left friends there that night that didn't. I was sure that this one would get ugly, too. I just hoped that I would be around to finish it out.
I was still strolling down the street and had gotten almost to the intersection at the end of the overpass when I caught movement on both sides of me.
There was just a split second before I realized that there were more than just two bodies moving. There were at least five of the dogs. One launched from each side of the road simultaneously, with at least two more coming in low and another that appeared in the middle of the intersection.
I was combat trained even if I wasn't as young as I used to be. I dropped the hammer in my right hand and threw the adjustable wrench in my left. I had my forty out as I was hitting the ground. The two that were in the air never knew what hit them. I put a shot in the dead middle of each of their chests, the one that was low and to my left got another. I'm pretty sure it wasn't my shot that killed it but I knew that I slowed it down. My left has always been my weak side so I had a tendency to guard it first, but even at that I was too slow. It was only as I saw the one on my left falling and I was turning to my right that I realized the one at the intersection from in front of me was almost on top of me.
Everything after that was a blur. I dropped the forty as he hit me. I needed to have my hands free to keep that thing off of me. I locked onto his throat with both hands and was trying to use my elbows to keep his front legs from coming up.
It was big, like getting hit by a pro football linebacker. The wind was knocked out of me as I hit the ground, but I held on all the while trying to dig my thumbs into his windpipe. I got my legs up enough to get them locked around the dog's midsection, but the only thing that did was to allow him to beat me against the pavement every time that he lunged. I don't know how many times I had hit the pavement or for how long. I had quit seeing anything and my only thought was that if I let go of his throat I was going to die. I was trying to shove my thumbs through his windpipe, but his neck was so big that I couldn't get my hands all the way around his throat. He was trying to beat me to death against the ground while I was trying to strangle him. He began slowing down, but I was close to blacking out. It was only a matter of seconds before he had me.
All of a sudden he went limp and rolled off of me. It took a second before I could see again and recognized Ian standing there with a bloody combat knife in his hand. It was minutes later more before I realized that it looked a lot like mine. Ian had pulled my knife and plunged it between that Dog's ribs. I could feel blood on my shirt that I hadn't felt before. I was pretty sure that it all came from the Dog, but not completely sure.
Ian looked at me and said "I'm sorry for not being here sooner Mr. Ray, but there were more of them than we thought."
I still couldn't say much, but I sat up and looked around. I counted nine dead dogs on the pavement. That meant there were at least four of them that I hadn't spotted. It also meant that we were outnumbered. There were only five of the kids with myself and Ian when we set off. The whole thing happened in less than a minute. The only sounds were the three shots that I got off in the beginning.
Mike, Thomas and several others were coming from the overpass by the time the other five kids had gotten back. They were armed and moving fast.
Ian approached Thomas and they stopped before they got to me. He apprised him of the situation; it reminded me of one of the many military debriefings that I had been through. Ian didn't leave out a thing. Including the fact that at least three of the dogs had gotten away, that meant that we were outnumbered almost two to one. It was a wonder that none of these kids had gotten seriously hurt. I could see some scrapes and I'm sure that there were a few bruises among them, but I seemed to be in the worst way of all of them.
I could feel my back and arms starting to stiffen up and knew that I was in for a rough couple of days. No one was seriously hurt which was amazing considering that we had been set up for a perfect ambush that had been executed without a sound until I fired my forty. It was lying almost ten feet in front of me. That's how far that thing had knocked me backwards when he hit me.
It was with no small effort that I got up and walked over to pick up that weapon. I immediately put in a fresh clip and took a few seconds to add three shells to the clip that I had just pulled. That was an old Iraq habit, make damn sure that your weapon was loaded then make sure that you knew how many rounds were in your spare clips.
By the time that I had finished reloading, Mike and Thomas were headed my direction. She had the look. You know the one, I've seen it on many of my CO's faces when they were getting ready to tear me a new asshole. I just holstered my weapon and started taking off my shirt to make sure that it wasn't my blood all over me.
She stood and watched me without saying a word. She was waiting for me to say something to defend my actions, anything to give her an opening that she could shut down. But I didn't say a word. There wasn't really a defense for setting out into hostile territory undermanned and under gunned.
Mike finally opened up. "What you have to say? You fucking John Wayne? You have idea what shape we could be in right now? We could be with no pilot for Prometheus!" My head jerked up and I started to open my mouth, but she was faster that I was.
She said, "Shut up until asked to respond", I didn't bother trying to tell her that she just asked me three questions in a row. I didn't think the timing was right on that one. Mike said, "My only pilot decide to go off exploring. You could have killed everyone topside depending on you just because you go and pull dumb fuck move and get self killed!"
At this point I opened my mouth. I don't think that I had really engaged my brain yet, because if I had I would have chickened out. I looked her straight in the eye and stuck my index finger in her face and said "Do you think that I give a flying fuck about myself or anyone else topside if I have watch you die in order for them to live? Hell no. There is no way that I'm going to leave you down here in a crippled shuttle that may or may not take off without a least doing my best to give you a fighting chance of getting that bastard off the ground!"
I was hot, the adrenalin was pumping and I wasn't going to stop. "The whole lot of them can burn in hell. There's not a one of them up there that gives a shit about you or me or anyone else down here. We've been something that they didn't know what to do with for the last twenty fucking years and if you or they think that I am going to watch the one person that I care the most about, in this world or any other, die just to see those son of a bitches live then you're fucking wrong! The whole lot of them aren't worth your spit! "
I hadn't blinked. Thomas was smiling and Mike had a shocked look on her face. Her eyes were wet, I don't know if from anger or some other emotion. I just turned and headed back down the road like nothing had happened.
I still hadn't buttoned my shirt yet or checked to see if any of the blood was from me or the dog. I didn't feel like I was hurt, but I knew that would come later. I had too much of an adrenaline high to feel any sort of pain just then. I did have the sense to start buttoning up as I walked. It took me a second to realize that I had Ian on my right side and David on my left. David was carrying an M-16 in a combat ready hold. I wasn't sure how he had gotten it, but I had a pretty good idea where. It must have come from Mike or one of the others. Most of the firearms that I had seen in
this group amounted to hunting rifles or shotguns with the rest being made up of personal handguns, but I hadn't seen an automatic rifle since we had landed.
After a couple of hundred steps David spoke up "What are we hunting?" Ian looked at me and when I didn't answer, he said "Mr. Ray wants to find a piece of metal to act like a sled so that he can attach it to the front end of Miss Mike's shuttle." He went on to describe everything that I had told him. I was amazed at how well he had gotten the idea, considering that it hadn't snowed since they had heated up the atmosphere in the middle east.
When he had finished David said "Mr. Ray do you think that a hood from a 1957 Chevrolet Nomad would work?"
I stopped in my tracks. I didn't know that this kid would know the difference between a Chevrolet and a Ford, much less recognize the name of a Nomad. I wasn't familiar with the actual body style but I knew something from the fifties should work pretty well, with its rounded edges, no sharp corners it should be perfect.
I looked him over and said "David why do you ask that question? Is there one of those cars close? Are you familiar with their design?"
He grinned and said "My grandfather and I used to come down here to the parking lot and sit in one and he would tell me stories about his first car, it was a 1955 Chevy Nomad. He used to tell me stories about the car. About the fact that it was a classic collectible and it was too bad that it was sitting there going to waste. I think he would like to see it be of use."
Chapter 10
The Nomad was perfect. There were a couple of hood ornaments that I could have done without but structure and shape were perfect. This thing was built like a tank. The boys could see my enthusiasm and it was catching. It took us a couple of seconds to get the hood up and by the time that Mike and Thomas had caught up with us we were working on taking the hood off.
The fact that Mike was missing her M-16 explained where David had gotten his from. She just stood there quietly while David, Ian and I worked to remove the hood from the Nomad.
We had gathered quite a crowd. There were the five original kids, Ian, then David, Mike and Thomas as well as about fifteen other people, some kids, some adults. There were as many facing out towards the rest of the world as there were facing in towards the Nomad. David and Ian were busy explaining what we were trying to do as several of the other boys and myself were busy trying to take the hood off.
The bolts were tight and rusted. Ian had picked up the adjustable wrenches and hammer where they had fell from my hands. I adjusted the wrench to fit and proceeded to hit it with the hammer until the first bolt broke loose. After that, one of the older boys decided that he wanted a try at it and took over on the other bolts. I stepped back to watch and supervise, as I did I noticed that Thomas was making a point to move over towards me.
As he moved over next to me, he said, "I have to admit, Mr. Ray, that you make your point very effectively".
I looked over at him and he had a grin that would have made a teenager proud. I looked at Mike, she was busy inspecting the hood, and asked him what he meant. He smiled and said, "walk with me for a moment, I think that those young men know what you need and they will be very competently supervised by Commander Nikolaevna." He turned and started back the way we had come.
He had gotten just out of earshot of most of the crowd at the Nomad, part of which followed us to act as our keepers, when he said "It's obvious to me that you love Commander Nikolaevna and she now knows that. I think that the real problem is that you haven't actually told her that yet and she's afraid to make the first move."
I stopped and stared for a second. I don't think that I had ever thought about loving Mike. She was the best friend that I had ever had. Did that mean that I loved her? I wasn't sure that I knew what love actually was. After all, I never had a chance to develop a real relationship with a woman. I joined the Navy when I was eighteen, was a fighter pilot, flying combat missions, by the time I was twenty and then a shuttle pilot at the age of twenty-five. That doesn't leave much time for a relationship, just a series of fly-by's that sometimes left you with fond memories. I had never thought about loving Mike, but then again, I had never thought about loving anyone other than the plane that I flew on a daily basis. I spent twenty years on Bravo just remembering what I had lost and being bitter for it. Had I ever thought about loving Mike? I didn't think so, but I also thought that a world without Mike in it wasn't worth living in. I also didn't think that she nor I was prepared to complicate the current situation even more than it was already complicated.
I looked at Thomas and said "Mind your own business". He just grinned while I turned and walked back towards the Nomad.
They boys had gotten the hood off by the time that I had gotten back, had it flipped over on its top and were removing the hood ornaments with Mike supervising.
She pretty well tried to ignore me and I kept trying to think of something to say to break the ice, and ice it was. I could feel the fact that I had crossed some kind of line. Until now, everything had been about the mission. Now things were different. I'm sure that if something like this had happened before things went bad that I would have ended up facing a review board for my conduct.
We headed back to Nemesis with several of the boys pulling the Nomad's hood behind them. It was a quiet, uneventful trip back. There was no conversation, other than Mike telling me to keep "head out of ass and looking for dogs" and the boys chattering back and forth. That's how I could tell we weren't being watched by anyone. These boys had a sixth sense, or possibly seven or eight, about things within the reach of harming them.
It was instinctive with them. The way that a cat would turn its head seconds before you heard the sound or the way that a dog would sniff the air just before someone would knock at your front door. They knew. They may not have known how they knew, but that didn't make any difference, they still knew, and it kept them, as well as us alive.
It was too late to do much with Nemesis by the time we had gotten back. None of us had any lunch, but some of the men and a couple of the women from the group had brought in what appeared to be roasted pork and homemade bread along with some kind of stew.
It was the best meal that I had eaten in my life.
I sat quietly, while Charlie and Russell talked about how to attach the Nomad hood to the nose of the shuttle. At one point during the conversation, Charlie looked up at me and asked "exactly how aerodynamic do you expect that hood to be Ray?"
I looked up for a second, and replied, "that hood won't be there thirty seconds after takeoff, it’ll have to be blown if Nemesis is going to break atmosphere."
That started another round of animated conversation between Charlie and Russell. I knew that Charlie would be trying to figure this one out all night so I decided to give him some help.
"If we take the a couple of the cockpit bolts out and wire them to a switch in the cockpit, that will allow you guys to blow the bolts whenever you think that you weren't going to have to land again."
You could see the gears working in Charlie's head. He was turning this over a couple of times and I could see the recognition in his eyes as he both saw that the idea could work and the fact that I wasn't including myself in that launch. He just nodded and softly said, "that will work, my friend."
I think that's the first time that he realized that we all may not be going back together and the possibility that some of us may make it back while some may not.
It was different in Iraq. We could have always died, but the possibility that teammates would be left behind while alive was unheard of. We didn't abandon each other. We knew that there was always the possibility of pick up, even in a hot zone, and we had both been picked up out of hot zones more than once.
The taste of the meal went flat in my mouth. I wasn't hungry anymore. I stood up and without saying anything scraped off my plate in the fire and laid it next to the rest of the stuff for someone else to clean up. I headed for the shuttle. I knew that I would have to stay there for the evening, so why try to m
ake anyone force me there. I could feel Russell's eyes in my back as I walked away. I was sure that Charlie would explain it to him after I had walked away. Charlie knew. And he knew why it was so important. Charlie was smarter than I was about stuff like that. I was still trying to figure out some sort of alternative and wasn't getting anywhere.
I had just settled in to the shuttle when I saw the light of the door as it slowly opened. I lay there without giving any indication that I was even there, much less awake. It didn't take me long to realize that it was Mike. I should have known, no one but her or one of the children could have climbed that ladder without me hearing it, and the children wouldn't have dared.
She stood in front of me for a moment without saying anything. When she did speak, she said, "you want to talk about this?"
It took me a minute to respond, "Is there anything to talk about? Isn't everything decided? We have things that have to be done that pretty well preclude the things that we want to do, so what the hell is there to talk about?"
"American men are so stupid. Think only that what matters to them is important. Not what matters to rest of the world. Don't realize that other people hurting too, but just don't want to see people close die, when can live if just do fucking duty!"
I could tell Mike was upset. Anytime she became hard to understand, she was upset. I didn't really have an answer for her or at least not one that she would accept. I stood up and finally said something that I should have said years ago, "Do you not realize that for me to live without you isn't living? That I would be an empty shell of the man that I am without you in my life? That my life without yours is worthless?"
She didn't hesitate, "No, your life is worth every one of those people topside. Your life is worth mine because without you, my life nothing. Without you thousands of people die and even if I live, it without purpose. You are reason that I live, we are here to make you succeed!"
The End of the Beginning Page 9
