by Ahern, Jerry
The knife was still in his back.
She would never remove it. There was a survival knife aboard the helicopter —she could take that.
The Beretta pistol — she had loaded the chamber but only after pushing the muzzle of the emptied pistol against the blanket and trying to pull the trigger —the slide had worked back and the trigger had jammed. If the pistol had been chamber-loaded and she had pressed it against Blackburn’s side, if she had done it hard enough, it might not have discharged and he would have killed her.
It was cold as she knelt on the opposite side of the tent, on the opposite side of the lantern from him, but she had raised her skirt and slip, removed her sweater, opened her blouse, and, shivering, washed herself with the warm soapy water where he had touched her.
She would tell Paul, if she lived —tell him all of it. She wondered if he would forgive her, or if he would see anything that needed forgiving. She rinsed the soap away, toweling herself dry with an extra blanket, the rough wool even rougher feeling against her body. She
dressed herself, winding the blanket around her —the wet corner would dry; the other blanket was under Blackburn’s body. She left the tent, the howl of the wind tearing at her ears as she opened the flap —but she went behind the tent, did what she had to do, and used the last of the packet of toilet paper —she hoped there was more aboard the helicopter. Her left hand had never released the pistol since the moment she had left the tent, and as she entered the tent again, reflexively she aimed the pistol at Blackburn — but he could not have been more dead. His sphincters — if that was what they were called —had relaxed, and there was a horrible smell in the tent now. But she forced herself to search his pockets. A Swiss Army knife —all of the Eden Project crew carried them. A handkerchief. She left the handkerchief and took the knife.
She caught up one of the survival blankets, wrapping this over the woolen blanket already around her. She would need to make leg warmers and foot coverings for herself — the combat boots wouldn’t do to keep her feet from frostbite. And the wind blew beneath her skirt. She took the other blanket, then stuffed the pockets of her coat with packets of the survival rations Blackburn had retrieved.
The helicopter —perhaps he had lied about the radio. But where had he gotten the printed circuit?
She left the tent again, swathed in the blankets, her shawl, her coat, hugging the blankets tight around her legs. The helicopter—she wedged her body against the wind and the driven ice spicules toward it, no real reason to go to the machine except for the survival knife —she could not fly the machine.
Annie Rourke reached the helicopter, clamboring aboard as she wrenched the fuselage door open, into the cockpit, closing the door, securing it locked —she didn’t know why. It was like she imagined a tomb
would be.
The night had been something that had not come, but instead been something they had flown into, a dull orb of sun on the horizon, seeming just to be there and then gone, as though it had never been.
She activated the electrical systems, having learned that much watching Blackburn. She found the radio — she would not talk into it, lest the Russians be monitoring the frequency. To be saved by them would be no salvation at all.
But the radio made no sound.
There was a red button beneath it, the button protected by a wire-cage cover which she removed. She depressed the red button, the button lighting. Depressing it again did not turn it off. “Shit,” she hissed.
She killed the electrical system, taking the flashlight off the dashboard and turning it on —the beam was weak, because of the extreme cold, she assumed. She started aft, to explore what might be useful to her survival. More emergency rations, these newer-looking, less artfully packaged. The survival knife —not much of a knife, really, but sturdy enough, a synthetic-seeming leather-washered handle, a solid butt cap that could be used for hammering, the blade six inches, roughly Bowie-shaped with sawteeth on the spine. It was stainless steel, or something like it. The sheath was a synthetic that looked like leather but not quite — and it seemed brittle in the cold. She pocketed it with the survival food and continued her search. A lensatic compass—the needle spun and settled, but bobbed continuously at least ten degrees. “Terrific,” she told herself. A small pouch — fishing gear. She recognized fishing gear, had seen it, had had her father show her how it worked. But there were no fish —then again, perhaps the Soviets knew something she did not. She took the kit and set it aside. An emergency medical kit,
even to the red cross symbol against the white background. She inspected the contents quickly. There were several sutures and she could use these with the fishing line to fashion the blankets into woolen trousers to protect her legs. It would also be something to do, to keep her mind off the inevitability of death, she realized.
A flare gun and flares to go with it. These might be useful —maybe.
No weapons. The machine guns aboard the helicopter could perhaps be dismounted, but not carried conveniently. Blackburn’s U.S. pistol and the Soviet survival knife and the M-16s would do well enough as weapons.
The tent was the logical place to stay the night —or however long she stayed. Blackburn’s body —she could drag it out on the blanket and — Annie lowered her face into her gloved hands, balling her hands into fists, knotting her fists against her eyes. She wept …
She could not sleep, and her hands trembled — with the cold and with fear —as she used the suture and the fishing line to stitch together the pants that she had cut out using the survival knife. What remained of the blanket she would use to fabricate belt loops and a belt to tie them about her waist since there was no elastic, no zipper (except the ones on Blackburn’s coveralls). She judged there would be enough of the fishing line to meet her sewing needs. She had found a rope in the helicopter, but was not prepared to cut any of it as a belt for the blanket pants —she had no idea of the terrain, and an extra two feet of rope might have more vital uses than as a belt.
She was stitching along the inside seam of the right leg when she heard the sound.
The wind, she told herself, squinting in the lamplight over her sewing.
She heard the sound again, loosing the sewing, with her left hand, the needle slipped into the fabric to prevent its loss. She let go of the pants, letting them fall onto her lap, drawing both her hands under her blankets, waiting there, listening. She had adjusted Blackburn’s pistol belt to her waist and wore it snugged around the outside of her coat. She had thrown away the bayonet sheath, replacing it with the fake leather survival knife sheath and the knife itself. But her right hand reached to the holster, opening the flap, drawing out the Beretta 92-F, slipping it from beneath the blankets.
If her brother, or Paul, or her father had found her, none of them —even Michael with his sometimes-bizarre sense of humor —would have prowled around the tent. Blackburn’s body had seemingly been heavier to haul in death than to support over hers in life, and she had dragged him only a short distance from the tent, covering his body with the folded-over blanket, leaving the drifting snow to do the rest.
She heard the sound again — saw the tent wall beside her move inward, as if buckling, then the impression of whatever had bumped against it was gone. Her hands shook, both holding the Beretta. “Who’s out there!” She screamed the words.
She had read stories of ghosts —Blackburn. Had he come back from the dead?
Annie Rourke told herself that was impossible.
She set the pistol in her lap, pulling on her gloves, making a mental note to fashion sack-like mittens from remnants of the blanket material, to further protect her hands.
Gloves on, she took the Beretta in her tiny right fist, working the safety off, pushing her sewing aside with her left hand, gathering her blankets around her as she stood. “Who is — ” She didn’t finish it —movement
against the wall of the tent again.
No one could live here. She would have heard the sound of a helicopter landing.
&nbs
p; It was the wind — the wind had made the tent buckle inward —a strong gust, very strong. But why only in one spot? she asked herself.
It happened again —she stabbed the Beretta toward it, almost firing. But a bullet hole in the tent wouldn’t be easily patched, and the wind would rip it larger.
“I’ve got a gun —if you’ve seen the body outside, you know I’m not afraid to kill. Who are you?” She kept her voice even, loud enough to be heard, she thought, outside the tent. Perhaps Russians —and they didn’t speak English?
She walked forward, hugging the blankets around her with her left hand, clutching them at her breasts, her right fist balled on the pistol.
She stopped at the tent flap. “Go away!”
The sound again —like a howl, but not; like shouted words of anger, but not human.
Blackburn — she shivered.
Annie Rourke opened the tent flap, the wind assailing her, whipping at her skirt, at the blankets that cocooned her.
The storm had intensified, and she could see nothing in the darkness. The flashlight —it was where she had left her sewing.
She heard the sound again.
She fired the pistol once into the air. “Whoever the hell you are —I mean it!” The moaning sound.
She told herself it couldn’t be Forrest Blackburn because Forrest Blackburn was dead —she had seen enough of death to know it when she saw it.
She worked the safety down, then back up, to drop the hammer but make the pistol ready for a quick
double-action shot.
Annie Rourke stepped away from the tent —in the darkness, there would still be the glow through the canvas or whatever it was — she would be able to find it again. Unless the lamp went out… . She worked all the possibilities in her head, trying to do like her father always did, would do now, trying to plan it all ahead.
She heard the sound, and turned toward it —it came from the direction in which she had dragged Forrest Blackburn’s body.
“There’s no such thing as a ghost!” she screamed, stabbing the pistol toward the darkness.
The moaning sound —she fired the pistol toward it. The sound stopped —she worked the safety again to drop the hammer, then worked it up to the fire position.
It was the main problem with being a girl, she had always thought —your voice wasn’t deep enough to be taken seriously and you went out of your way to make yourself look gentle, and so how did you look tough?
She advanced, slowly, the blankets still clutched at her breasts in her left fist, the pistol close to her body like her father had always taught her.
It wouldn’t be long until she reached the spot where Blackburn’s body lay —she had to see it, and in the seconds since leaving the tent her eyes had become accustomed enough to the swirling darkness that she could see.
Something came against her body and she fell forward, no time to turn the pistol, to fire, and her head impacted against Forrest Blackburn’s face and she saw the dead eyes looking at her. But she had summoned the courage to close the eyelids, to shut them. Why were they open? She screamed, rolling onto her back. Something huge hulked over her.
She had seen pictures of bears —the thing seemed
incredibly huge. But bears were dead. Forrest Blackburn was dead. She stabbed the pistol toward the apparition, toward the shape, making to fire, but her right hand suddenly went numb and the pistol flew from her grasp.
And the thing started to reach for her and she pushed to her feet and started running into the blackness …
He had taken sightings on Polaris, juxtaposing these against the accuracy of his Rolex, to get a fix on latitude and longitude, just before they had passed into the cloud bank —the compass seemed to be holding to a steady degree of error and Rourke compensated for it as he plotted their position in the map light, the _ machine bouncing, lurching in the churning air around them. Natalia, in the copilot’s seat, spoke. “I’m taking her down —we can use the running lights to make sure we avoid the whitecaps — the storm at this altitude will tear us apart.”
Paul Rubenstein crouched between them. Sarah at the radio, listening for a distress call, whispered, “She’s out in this, maybe —shit —”
“If Blackburn doesn’t know how to survive in extreme cold, Annie does. I taught her, just like I taught Michael. Blackburn’s no dummy —if he doesn’t know what to do and it sounds like Annie does, he’ll listen to her. If they’re on the ground. And if they were on the ground before this started and they’re in the same weather system we are, they won’t go airborne. This could pull it out of the fire for us, Paul.”
“If we live that long,” Natalia added cheerlessly.
Rourke just looked at her and smiled, knowing she couldn’t see him —her eyes were riveted ahead. He felt the queasy feeling in his stomach as the helicopter
lurched, Natalia announcing, “I’m taking her down.”
“All right —let me know when you want me to spell you.”
“No hurry — I rode one of those bucking bulls once in a bar. I was on an assignment with Yuri —you never met him. Well, you did —after those brigands killed him, right before you and Paul found me wandering in the desert. Yuri played the redneck —always. He wore cowboy hats and boots and snap-front cowboy shirts and spoke English with a perfect Southern accent. But it’s like this, flying this helicopter —like riding the bull. You just have to hang on and watch out that it follows a pattern.”
“Did you make it?” Paul asked. “I mean —did you stay on until the bull stopped?”
She didn’t flicker her eyes from the windshield — rain and balls of ice and sleet lashed it —“How about I tell you after the storm subsides, Paul!” she smiled.
Behind him, John Rourke heard Sarah shout. “A radio signal —it sounds like it’s Russian. I don’t know. But I hear it —in and out—just repeating.”
“What frequency?” Rourke snapped, turning in his seat, staring toward her in the center of the fuselage.
“It’s crossing frequencies — try between 121.500 and 121.600 megahertz.”
Rourke twisted back in his seat, taking up his headphone set, working the dials for the radio, off the frequency shared with Kurinami’s chopper and the fighter planes of Wolfgang Mann, tuning, the static becoming lighter as they dropped altitude, his eyes scanning the altimeter.
He heard it —it was the most simple of distress signals, and obviously a recording. The word was Pahmageeyeh — help.
Rourke cut out, shouting to Sarah, “Keep monitoring, Sarah,” and then dialing into the frequency with
Kurinami. “Akiro —this is Rourke. Over. Akiro —come in —this is Rourke. Over.” Nothing. He said to Paul, to Sarah, to Natalia, “If I can raise Kurinami and he can pick up the distress signal, we can work a triangulation, nail down the position.” Into the headset, Rourke said again, “Kurinami — this is Rourke —do you read me? Over.” John Rourke prayed.
Chapter Six
The storm had subsided.
The triangulation had been made.
The tent and the Soviet helicopter had been sighted on an ice field.
Rourke’s helicopter had landed.
The Soviet helicopter had been empty of life.
The tent had been partially blown down in the wind.
The body of Forrest Blackburn had been uncovered, buried several inches under the snow except for a rigored left arm which had extended ominously upward, as if a warning beacon —but a warning for what? Paul Rubenstein had wondered.
Sarah, John, Natalia —they had been with him as he had entered the tent, Sarah dropping to her knees beside pieces of blanket material, raising them toward her face. “Annie —she was sewing these.”
“Wandered off, maybe,” Rourke said slowly. “Natalia—let’s get — “
But Natalia had left the tent.
Paul Rubenstein stepped out into the gray light, John Rourke beside him, Sarah after them as Paul looked back. Natalia was near the body of Blackburn, kneeling
there. “Did you look closely at the body, John?”
“No —not yet.”
“Several things —they tell a story, Paul —look around the body — Sarah — would you help him? Make a search area, say ten yards out, cover it, then expand it another ten yards. If that hole was a standard field survival cache — “
“What hole?” Paul asked her.
“The one you and Michael and Madison discovered. There were two M-16s in the tent. But there was no pistol. There should have been a pistol. Find it —if you can’t, we’ll know Annie has it.”
“All right,” Paul answered, but then, “What’s peculiar about the body?”
John Rourke knelt in the snow beside Natalia. He answered Paul. “Multiple stab wounds — something the size of an M-16 bayonet or a Gerber — “
“Wait-“
John Rourke was helping Natalia roll over the body now, Paul drawing closer. Natalia said it. “Bayonet.” An M-16 bayonet was buried up to the hilt in Blackburn’s back where the spine would be. And the multiple stab wounds were evident. “Help me roll him over again, John,” she said.
Paul started looking —for the pistol, he guessed, or whatever else might provide some clue.
Sarah, far to Paul’s left shoulder, shouted, “I found it —over here.” Paul ran toward her, John and Natalia coming as well now, Sarah holding what looked like a black semiautomatic in her right hand, brushing snow from it. “Safety’s off.”
John Rourke took the pistol from her —it was a Beretta 92SB-F, the fifteen-plus-one shot 9mm parabel-lum adopted by the U.S. military just prior to The Night of The War—John Rourke had one at the Retreat. Rourke was examining it. “One shot fired, maybe two, depending on whether there was one in the chamber to start with plus a full magazine or not.
These are good shooters —and Annie’s a good shot. If she had a target she could see —and with visibility last night that could be questionable — she would have hit it. It couldn’t have been some large force or she would have taken one or both of the M-16s.”
“You — ahh — think she just wandered off? But she wouldn’t —not without her gun, some weapon.”
