“What now? I don’t know. To start with we need to get to the base alive and healthy. Then we’ll try to find each other – I think at the base men and women will be separated.”
“So this is war? With whom?”
“They’re Americans, lady. They will always someone to go to war against.”
41. Even worse
Loading took longer than expected. First they sent only the women with children, which filled all the available minibuses. The transport provided was still not enough, and those who had no place in the minibuses, were put in trucks. It’s the usual military trucks with camouflage tents and hard benches, and Boris could see no armored MRAP vehicles. He did notice how workers quickly loaded boxes and bags of food from the warehouse to the trucks, which strengthened his suspicions about big trouble ahead. As far as he knew, the Americans have never suffered from a lack of food in war, so it meant that they were making this revision of provisions for a very good reason. He wasn’t surprised if at the same time going mining of the plant.
“Start loading the second column!”
Natasha tries to climb into the truck first, but Boris stopped her.
“What?”
“We’ll get in last and sit at the rear; it won’t be so stuffy there.”
“Ah, okay.”
Gently pushing her up, he then quickly took his place. The marines raised the tailgate, and, after about half a minute, the truck started moving slowly to the gate. Boris kept a watch on everything that was happening. He had deliberately placed them at the back of the truck, and not just due to the stifling atmosphere; they must be prepared to abandon ship if needed.
“…call?”
“What?”
“Can we call from this base? Call home?”
“I wouldn’t count on it. They’ve disabled the Internet and telephones; they don’t want civilians able to contact anyone. Most likely, people on the mainland don’t know anything about what is happening here.”
“I’m worried about my job! I will be fired if I don’t return in time, how I will explain…”
Natasha didn’t finish the sentence because she was thrown on a woman sitting on the right - the driver had abruptly stamped on the brakes.
“What is it?”
The pause for unclear reasons lasted two minutes, and then the column moved forward again, still at a low speed. For those two minutes Boris waited for shooting, but it remained quiet.
“How long until we get there?”
“Another half hour.”
There was a rumble, and a blast wave struck the tent board. The truck shuddered, drove a dozen meters and stopped, banked to the left side. Flames could be seen through huge holes in the tent.
“Get out!”
Boris pushed Natasha overboard, and then jumped. The girl tried to get up immediately after the hard landing, but he knocked her down.
“Don’t get up!”
The shooting didn’t stop, as survivors climbed from the burning trucks, many injured. There was furious honking from behind, as the truck following tried to pull off the road and pass by. There was a loud bang and the unarmored cabin shattered into pieces. The broken car veered off into the ditch, and Boris barely managed to pull Natasha from under the wheels.
The truck travelled a little further, then the front left wheel hit a bump, and it collapsed to the side. A wounded soldier tried to jump from the broken cabin. And then Boris saw the enemy, only twenty meters in front of him - a man in a baseball cap and a dirty greasy overall, who just appeared from out of the ground. He adjusted the carbine barrel rifle grenade, shooting something, and then reached for the next grenade, before falling in a spray of blood, chopped in two by aircraft machine guns.
“What do we do?”
“Lie down!”
For a couple of seconds Boris left her in the ditch, quickly crawling to the overturned truck and removing the gun from the soldier’s corpse.
“Natasha - here, quick!”
Some of the passengers in the overturned truck had survived the explosion, he heard cries for help. He removed a short knife from his belt and ripped through the canvas roof, giving them a way out. The next shot rang out, and Boris, extremely cautiously, peered for a brief moment out of the truck.
He saw the enemy, this time a few of them, again climbing out of some holes in the ground. In their hands were machetes and axes, and they frantically cut the refugees. One of the killers froze for a moment, and then rushed to Boris’ hiding place.
The Colt 1911 twitched in Boris’ hand, and the madman with a bloody machete caught a bullet in the stomach, falling face down in the sand. The second one Boris hit in the chest, but somehow he kept his feet and continued to run, so with the third shot Boris shot him in the face. Then machine guns hit the corpse.
“DROP THE GUN!”
He immediately obeyed, throwing the Colt far away - in the heat of battle they could easily take him for an assailant and shoot before they understood their mistake.
42. Arrivals
“Where are they hiding?”
“Underground, sir. Thirty years ago there was a plant there, and the sewage effluents went straight to the ocean, under the road. The plant is long gone, but the pipes survived and the infected are hiding there. They let the first group pass and hit the column in the center. Two trucks with refugees were destroyed, and two more were damaged.”
The Colonel once again looked at the record of the fight. The first car had been undermined, while the second truck was forced off the road. Here were the attackers - they did indeed climb out of some holes in the ground like cockroaches. They hit the second truck, so that the passengers jumped out, then approached the armored convoy, beginning a fierce firefight. More and more infected climbed from the underground shelter to the surface. Not all attackers were armed with firearms; many had machetes, axes and other agricultural tools in their hands. Some were unarmed, but that didn’t stop them. The infected didn’t try to attack the marines, they aimed for the refugees. It would be necessary to ask Palmer why this would be - why did they attack only those who weren’t infected, why did they not kill each other? Mass insanity? It was unlikely that they had completely lost their minds. The ambush was well organized, the infected using knowledge of the territory as a significant advantage.
“Losses?”
“At the moment we have two dead and three wounded, one seriously. There are eleven dead civilians, including two women and one child. It’s been confirmed thirty-six attackers have been killed.”
“How many wounded civilians?”
“Nineteen, three seriously.”
“Send them into quarantine. And who is this?”
The Colonel drew attention to a civilian – the man with the gun had an effective resistance to his attackers.
“Find out who it is.”
The handcuffs of white durable plastic tape, which were put on immediately after the shooting, had been removed only upon arrival at the base, after he was taken from an armored car and held in a large tent, like a registration point. The handcuffs were removed, and he was offered a place at the plastic table and given a glass of warm water.
“Boris Kond…”
“Boris Kondratiev. Kondratiev.”
“Kondratiev, I see. A citizen of the Russian Federation, in this country on a work visa. What brought you to this land, Comrade Kondratiev?”
Boris looked at the skinny bespectacled man, who held his passport.
“I work for the gas company, as a security guard. I’m here guarding Natalia Smirnova, a manager. She's here on a business trip.”
“Natalia, this is the girl who was with you in the truck?”
“Yes. Is she all right?”
“She's all right; a couple of bruises and all. So what was she dealing with at the factory?”
“That you will have to ask her, I'm just a guard. In any case, our business here had finished, and we were supposed to fly yesterday. My boarding pass is inside the passport. The
flight was canceled.”
“I get it. Mr. Kondratiev, did you serve in the Russian army?”
“In an airborne squadron.”
“Oh, airborne troops! Did you participate in the recent conflicts?”
“Yes.”
“Clearly, it will be necessary for us to clarify that. You speak English well – do you speak any other languages except Russian?”
“Just a little Spanish. I can order a beer and a snack, nothing more.”
“It’s not surprising that you were sent to protect Miss Smirnov, you have a comprehensive approach to this work.”
“I try. And now, if I may ask a question – am I arrested, and if so, on what charge?”
“No, you aren’t arrested and there are no charges at all. We had to bring you here in this way because the circumstances, but now everything has been cleared up; you can go to the other civilians in camp. And thank you for your participation, it was very timely.”
“You’re welcome. But I’d like to know who I had to kill today, protecting myself and the other refugees? Just in case, to avoid later misunderstandings.”
“Terrorists, Mr. Kondratiev, terrorists. It was self-defense, fully within the law; you don’t need to worry on that score. All the best.”
A marine came in and Boris realized that the conversation was over. He came out of the registration point, not asking a lot of questions. He didn’t ask who these terrorists were or what they wanted. It was also useless to ask when he would be allowed to leave the country. He should just be happy that he’d reached the base alive and hadn’t been thrown in jail.
43. Temporary shelter
The civilians were taken to a military base, but were not allowed enter it or wander around. The Colonel planned to keep the refugees alone in a tent camp near the runway.
The engineers had installed a neat row of large tents. Unloading was much faster than loading – the column of refugees went into the camp through a few checkpoints, where they were searched for weapons. As they passed through, each received a plastic bracelet with an individual chip on their left arm, which defined their place in a numbered tent and provided them a portion of food and water in the common dining room.
Boris had already been released after his identification and, like everyone else, received a bracelet on his arm. He decided to spend his free time before dinner learning about their new home.
To the right, behind the wire fence, extended a concrete runway. At the far end of the runway was a control tower, next to which stood a Hercules C-130; he could see the protective covers on the engines.
Beyond the runway was a helipad filled with some Black Hawks, and then barracks. Boris saw the port hangars, a few motionless cranes and a small piece of the ocean. And also a strange object that seemed to be alien in this coordinated, harmonious picture - a set of unknown purpose, built of a dozen container boxes interconnected by inflatable transitions. Something unusual was in this building, and a few seconds later, Boris knew what. Bright fresh paint, that was what gave him the clue.
The sun mercilessly fried the ground here all year, and even resistant paint faded quickly under its rays, in addition to being exposed to the effects of frequent dust storms. All that he had seen here had faded, but these modules shone with new colors, like Lego blocks the first time out of the box. It was built recently. Boris couldn’t prove it, but it was almost certain that the appearance of a strange toy town on a military base and the fighting in the valley was somehow connected. But how?
After watching the military base for a few minutes, Boris turned around and went in the opposite direction, to the far edge of the tent camp, where a lot of other neighbors had already gathered. Before them stretched the valley - open rocky wasteland, followed by green fields of weed. High mountains rose like a wall, jagged peaks propping up the cloudless blue sky. On the highest peak was a gleaming cap of snow.
Over the fields here and there rose blackened columns of smoke. Wire entanglement is much more powerful than on the other side, just behind the wire fences, Hammer moving slowly on country road. Beyond the road were metal pylons, with yellow plates, and black stenciled lettering showing "Danger - mine!" Jolly Roger grinned in an eternal smile.
“Boris.”
This was Natasha. She had just been released, and the first thing she’d done was rush to look for her companion - after the events of the morning, it seemed like the right thing to do.
“Where have you been all this time?”
“I was being held for polite questioning.”
“What did they ask?”
“Who I was, where I came from, what I’m doing here, things like that. They asked about what happened on the road. And they asked about you. I’m sorry, but I told them everything. I was very scared.”
“You did the right thing, otherwise they would have repeated the questions, except not so politely. Don’t worry - you still don’t know anything substantial. Did they tell you anything about what's going on here?”
“No, they just repeated the message about terrorists again and ordered me not to leave this place.”
“Did they returned you your passport?”
“Yes, but what about tickets…”
Boris made a sign to shut up; he looked at a Black Hawk that flew over the base. The helicopter was landing, but not on the helipad; instead very close to the toy town.
“Pardon me, madam,” Boris muttered and grabbed a small pair of binoculars from the woman standing next to him in spite of her protests. Through the binoculars he could see soldiers, who pulled out a few people with black bags over their heads and quickly dragged them into the nearest unit. The soldiers wore protective suits and gas masks.
44. The Last of the Mohicans
In his homeland tradition was appreciated, as was persistence. Because of this sons and grandsons continued the glorious deeds of their fathers and grandfathers, so Nguyen didn’t see any other life than to follow in the footsteps of his father. His father was a pilot and he would be a pilot.
The first time he took off, when he was thirteen, he flew a UH1, which was so old that it still remembered Americans and their stooges fleeing from Saigon in 1975. The old Huey belonged to his father’s tiny airline even before Nguyen’s birth, and served as his main and favorite toy during his childhood. He knew this chopper from the tip of the blade to the skids, and from the first time he flew he didn’t feel the slightest fear. He was in his place, he knew what to do.
After some time, he worked as his father’s co-pilot, mastering several types of helicopters, as well as learning to fly light airplanes. They had to work in different countries, and eventually came to the rapidly growing metropolises of southeast Asia just on the night that there was a fire in a luxury hotel, which entered the history of world catastrophes.
A skyscraper was on fire in the city center, and the flames quickly grew, forcing the hotel guests to run higher and higher, until they were trapped on the roof. Not thinking twice, his father raised his favorite Iroquois in the air, and made three short flights to the roof, snatching from the fire trap nearly four dozen people.
When he came to the fourth landing, the roof began to collapse, and people rushed to the helicopter all at once, mad with fire, sweeping past several firefighters who tried to keep order and stop the panic. Nguyen saw the Huey falling, the engine unable to cope with the excess weight.
After the funeral, Nguyen returned home for a short time, with the firm intention to make changes in the way the company worked. Transportation and passenger flights, as well as rescue operations, were in the past; now they would focus on the increasingly popular private military business. His father, a former North Vietnamese Air Force pilot, was opposed to this sort of work, but he was dead, and Nguyen looked to develop the business further.
Much later, Nguyen often recalled his choice, wondering if his reason for doing it was due to sober financial calculations, supporting a new profitable business, or whether he really wanted to go to war, and
risk all, the way his father had in his time.
Selling most of the former fleet, ground objects and part of the shares, he purchased four military transport MI17, and then acquired for personal use the machine of his dreams - a heavy assault MI24. The helicopter was upgraded with the latest innovations: updated avionics for night flying, a double-barreled gun turret and the newest anti-tank missiles.
A one-legged Russian pilot with a burnt face, who had three hundred combat missions in Afghanistan and Chechnya, taught him how to fly Crocodile. Nguyen studied carefully, learning all details of how to fly the helicopter. Soon he was able to apply this knowledge in practice.
His private squadron was hired to participate in the undeclared war that two African States had launched over a disputed archipelago. The archipelago was just a series of cliffs, protruding from the sea, only the largest of which could be called habitable. There was no permanent population, but local fishermen and smugglers periodically stopped here. They built a shelter of a few rusty containers, and sometimes spent the night there or during bad weather, never stopping for more than a day, due to the lack of fresh water on the island. For a long time no one was interested in these rocks except fishermen, but then geologists found oil on the shelf and the status of the archipelago rose sharply - if someone could make the archipelago their territory, then they could include the adjacent shelf.
The sluggish territorial dispute erupted with unexpected force, the state, for which he had contracted to fly, acting first - his transport helicopters landed paratroopers on the island, who dug trenches and dugouts around the fishing houses, installed light guns, raised the national flag and prepared to hold the line. The neighboring powers also asserted their rights to their ancestral territory, and for the next eight days, the territorial dispute moved from a diplomatic state to the military stage.
Fearing mines and anti-ship missiles, the main forces of the small fleets of both countries chose not to join in the fight, holding at a considerable distance from the disputed archipelago and leading the fighting to attack aircraft, helicopters and boats. The enemy began to bomb the island, while trying to grab it from the Marine Corps, who made regular forays on light boats. The outcome of the conflict depended on the supplies for the paratroopers, and in the first six nights of the war, Nguyen flew Crocodile to the archipelago thirteen times, covering transport helicopters loaded with weapons, food and water.
Vampire's Day (Book 2): Zero Model Page 9
