Rose City Free Fall

by DL Barbur

  The concrete apron was huge, easily big enough for five or six of the C-130’s, but it was empty, apparently, all the other aircraft were either in the hangars or deployed somewhere. The C-130 was just finishing a slow, ponderous turn back towards the taxiway as we sped across the apron. It jerked to a stop and there was a bloom of white light as the rear ramp started to lower. I saw figures seated inside, but it was too far away to make out detail. A fuel truck was speeding across the apron towards the plane.

  There was an eighteen passenger van parked on the apron. It was too dark to see inside.

  The folks by the van finally saw us charging across the apron. Somebody opened the back door of the van, saw us and abruptly shut it again. He started gesturing wildly to the crew chief standing inside the ramp of the plane.

  I realized the four huge props were still turning and that there was no sign of the fire truck. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “Go!” Bolle screamed over the radio. “Faster! Faster! Frederico where are you with the fire truck?”

  Our driver floored it. I hung on to keep from tumbling out of the back of the van.

  I watched the scene ahead of us unfold like a slow motion car wreck. Our van and the two trucks with the rest of Bolle’s team, and the fuel truck were all converging on one spot, where the passenger van with “Cascade Aviation” painted on the side was parked. Meanwhile, the C-130 was wallowing away from us, the light coming out of its back getting smaller as the rear ramp slid upwards on its hydraulics.

  It reminded me of one of those stupid word problems they made us do in math class. Instead of one train leaving Memphis westbound and another leaving St. Louis eastbound, it was three carloads full of a half-ass SWAT team headed north and a giant airplane also heading north. We were gaining slowly on the plane, but I knew that would change soon.

  Besides I was a little unclear exactly what we were supposed to do even if we pulled alongside while the plane was still moving. I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of sticking a knife in my teeth and jumping from the van to the plane like some kind of modern-day pirate.

  Now the Cascade Aviation van fired up and started following the plane. I wasn’t sure I understood the logic behind that, but it made our job easier. If the van had taken off the other way, headed right towards us, it would have made us split our forces to catch it.

  Off in the distance on the taxiway, I saw a pair of red and blue flashing lights.

  “We’re coming.” It took me a second to place the voice that crackled over my radio. It was Frederico. His voice was low and slurred, not like he was drunk, more like he was hurt.

  He coughed and his open microphone picked it up. “Ran into a couple of security guards outside the fire station. Be right there.”

  As it grew closer, I realized the vehicle was a fire truck, one of the low slung rigs you see at airports, designed for fast attacks on airplane fires. I wasn’t sure if was Frederico driving or if he was the figure hanging on to the water cannon for dear life, but whoever was behind the wheel, he was doing a hell of a job.

  The fire truck rounded a corner damn near on two wheels and went into a long skid, the rear end sliding around and threatening to swap ends with the front, a sure precursor to a nasty, rolling pile up. Most people would have a tendency to jerk the wheel hard, over-correcting and signing their own death warrant, but the driver let it ride with a smooth touch. The rear end of the fire truck gave a final little wiggle and then it was back on track and accelerating, barreling down the taxiway at the C-130.

  Again, physics wasn’t on our side. The guys in the fire truck were going to get one chance at this. By the time they passed the plane and got the fire truck turned around, the plane would be long gone, onto the runway and probably into the sky.

  The water cannon kicked on when the plane was still out of range, the long arc of foam and water just splashed down on the taxiway. But they were closing fast.

  I craned my neck to see under the wing of the plane as the water splashed down the side of the fuselage and along the wing. The cannoneer was flicking the stream of water back and forth along the left wing, hoping to get enough water into both engines to drown them out.

  We had to shut down two engines on the same side to keep the plane from taking off. It had seemed reasonable in the planning room. The cannon put out hundreds of gallons of water in just a few seconds, plenty to drown out the plane’s engines, but we’d counted on the plane being stationary.

  It looked like it wasn’t going to work. The closing speed was just too fast. Then, right as the truck and the plane were about to pass, the engines on the left side quit, both at once, as if someone had thrown a switch.

  The Hercules gave a drunken lurch to the left as all the power on that side suddenly went away. The driver of the fire truck had just enough time to twitch the wheel before the top of the cab kissed the bottom of the plane’s nose cone, sending the truck sliding off the runway into the mud.

  This time it was too much for the driver. The truck flipped and rolled twice like a Tonka toy thrown by an angry three-year-old before it started a long slide on its side, plowing up a wall of mud in front of it.

  The plane’s nose slewed back over to the right at the impact and I heard the scream of tortured rubber and a rapid series of pops as the Hercules’ tires gave way under the sideways force. In slow motion, the plane slid 90 degrees to its direction of travel. The wing closest to us pitched up towards the sky and I heard a long succession of rattling smashing sounds as the wing on the other side dug into the ground. The plane ground to a halt in a shower of sparks and flying pieces of aluminum.

  Well, I guess we stopped it, I thought.

  The Cascade Aviation van hit its brakes and slid on the foam on the taxiway, sliding sideways and almost tipping on its side before it stopped just short of the Hercules. Eddie and I looked at each other wide-eyed.

  “This is like a Dukes of Hazard episode!” he said, and inexplicably, laughed. Even more inexplicably, I found myself laughing too. It was crazy sometimes, what you would find funny, but I’d done it before. Just when things were going sideways, my funny bone would get tickled.

  Mickey, his eyes rolling like a spooked horse, looked at us like we were crazy. Al just looked irritated as Eddie and I sat there cackling at each other as we hung halfway out of the back of a van barreling towards a wrecked airplane.

  “Get ready.” Bolle’s voice brought me back to my senses. We were coming up on the van and the plane.

  Our driver had apparently been paying attention to the wild, panicked slide of the other van. He started braking early before we hit the sudsy firefighting foam all over the taxiway. Ahead of us, I could see figures milling around inside the van. The plane was still. Steam or smoke was roiling up from the far side, and the odor of aviation fuel was heavy in the air. Not good.

  It’s funny how you can get shot at and not even realize it for a few seconds. Our driver did a great job of getting us slowed down before we hit the foam. I heard a heavy hammering sound against the sheet metal body of the van, one, two, three, in rapid succession and frowned, trying to figure out what it was. Then our driver’s throat exploded. His hands flew up in the air and blood fountained out of his carotid like it was coming from a garden hose. It sprayed a heavy coat all over the inside of the windshield and then he slumped forward with a gurgling gasp.

  The van careened over to the left, and Eddie, Al and I all scrambled for the wheel at once. Al got there first. He leaned over the driver, whose head was lolling around as he sprayed even more blood, and managed to both grab the wheel and push the gear selector into neutral.

  We slid off the taxiway into the soft mud. The van swayed drunkenly from side to side.

  I thought for a second we would just coast to a stop in the field, but then the van started to lean farther and farther to the left. Through the blood-streaked windshield, I saw the world tilt at a crazy angle, then the van slammed down on the driver’s side. I had just enough time t
o think how lucky I was to land on Big Eddie instead of the other way around when Mickey landed on me, driving all the air out of my lungs and my helmeted head into the side of the van.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I didn’t get knocked all the way out, but things were a little fuzzy for a few seconds. I came around to the taste of blood in my mouth and a remarkable quiet. Somebody’s boot was grinding into my ear.

  I tried to talk, but “ack,” was all that came out.

  The quiet was ruined by the smack of a bullet against the roof of the van. Now that I was paying attention, I could hear the muffled crump of the rifle shot.

  “Incoming fire,” Eddie said. “We need to get off the X here.” As if to accentuate his point, I heard another round hit the van. Something plucked at my pant leg and I felt a sting in my calf. It wasn’t hard enough to be solid hit from a gunshot. It might have been a piece of bullet jacket or a piece of the van knocked loose.

  Eddie was right. The van was a big conspicuous target sitting on its side in the middle of the field, and we obviously had the attention of somebody with a rifle. I fought to my knees. I felt my ribs settling back into something resembling their original configuration. Body armor or no, I was very, very sore. Between the fight with Marshall, the fight in the hospital stairway, and now this, it was a wonder I didn’t have a collapsed lung. Every time I took a breath I felt a hot stitch of pain in my side.

  Al was already up, tending to the driver, who hung from his seat belt, gurgling and thrashing. Despite his own advice, Eddie moved to help him. Mickey was crouched by the back door, hunched over his rifle. He didn’t look like he was going anywhere soon.

  Rangers lead the way, I thought. I headed out the back of the van, grabbing Mickey as I went.

  “Go! Go! Go!” If nothing else, I’d learned how to yell when I was in the Army.

  It worked. Mickey popped up and was practically glued to me as I burst out of the van. The fact that I had my hand twisted up in the webbing on the back of his vest probably didn’t hurt.

  The van was lying on the left side. The back door on the bottom was open, but I had to duck low to miss the one hanging down from the top. As soon as I stepped out, I heard the whip crack of a bullet passing right over my head.

  Whoever our shooter was, he’d probably been waiting for somebody to come piling out of the back of the van.

  I broke left and headed around the van, half dragging Mickey. I almost scorched my cheek on the muffler as I went by. I ran until we were behind the engine block and took a second to take stock.

  There was a lot of shooting. The two Suburbans with the rest of Bolle’s team were stopped by the Cascade Aviation van and the wrecked airplane. I saw a confusing knot of running figures and muzzle flashes, but nobody over there seemed to be paying attention to us. I leaned around the front of the van, just enough to get an eyeball out from behind cover.

  I saw nothing, just an open expanse of torn up dirt, tarmac, and about two hundred and fifty yards away, a dark hangar. I leaned out a little farther and a bullet smacked into the van, not far from my head. I flinched back, but not before I caught a glimpse of a muzzle flash.

  Our boy was on the roof of the hangar. I fixed a mental image of where I’d seen the star-shaped flicker of the muzzle flash.

  Another round hit the hood of the van. I looked around.

  We were screwed. The sniper had obviously held his fire during our high-speed charge across the tarmac, but he’d been good enough to plug our driver as soon as we slowed down to a manageable speed.

  There’s not much cover on an airfield. We were a good hundred and fifty yards from the Suburbans and the plane. I’d bet even money he could hit most or maybe all of us if we just took off running. The rifle shots were a sharp crack, not a heavy boom. They sounded to me like something light and fast shooting, maybe an M-16 or something like that. He could dump a whole thirty round magazine at us while we were running and be well into another before we hit any kind of cover.

  Another round hit the van and I heard somebody inside swear. We were running out of time here. He could just keep firing blindly into the van. Vehicle sheet metal doesn’t stop even light rifle rounds very well, and we couldn’t all fit behind the engine block.

  “Dent! Make the sniper go away!” Al yelled from inside. He sounded more stressed than I’d ever heard him.

  “Working on it.”

  I looked at my shotgun. It was totally the wrong tool for the job unless I wanted to just make noise and hope I scared the sniper away. The buckshot would fall to the ground before it even got across the tarmac. The slugs would probably fly that far but they weren’t accurate at that range. I could probably count on hitting the hangar, and that was about it.

  Mickey was sitting there, his back hunched against the bottom of the van, looking out at the field, in the direction nobody was shooting at us from, at least not yet. I looked at his rifle. It had an awfully short barrel, but it was better than the shotgun.

  I reached down and grabbed Mickey’s rifle. He snapped back to reality and snarled at me, no words, just a deep animal sound from the back of his throat. He was pale and I realized there was blood coming from his hairline.

  “Hey, dude, relax. I just need to borrow your piece for a second to take care of that sniper. I’ll give it back.”

  Mickey stared at me, mute, like a chicken watching a card trick. Another round slammed into the van and the driver made a very final sounding rattling noise from inside.

  “Goddammit, Dent!” Al bellowed from inside. “Kill that sniper!”

  I don’t know what made me do it, but I pulled the security guard’s battered old Rossi revolver out of my chest pouch, handed it to Mickey butt first.

  “Here. Trade me. You take this. I’ll borrow the rifle.” He took it, wrapped his hands around the chipped wood grips of that old wheel gun and let me disconnect the sling of the rifle and take it.

  I was surprised, but it beat the hell out of my other idea which was to pound him over the head with the butt of my shotgun until he was unconscious and take the rifle from him. I pulled an extra magazine out of his chest rig and stuffed it in a pocket.

  The M-16 in my hands was a kissing cousin to the one I’d carried in the Army. I flipped the selector lever to “auto” as I leaned out around the front of the van.

  A bullet made a geyser of mud a foot away from me and I saw the muzzle flash again. The guy was either supremely confident or stupid. He wasn’t changing positions between shots.

  The trick to shooting full auto is to fight the urge to jam the trigger back and let all your ammo go in one long burst. After a few rounds, you were shooting into the stratosphere and hitting nothing. Before you knew it you’d be sitting there with an empty rifle and a dumb look on your face.

  I settled the glowing red dot of optical sight just below the spot where the muzzle flash had come from and started stroking the trigger, I held it back for a few rounds and as the recoil made the rounds rise up over my target, I let up.

  I was only off the trigger for a fraction of a second, just long enough to settle the muzzle back down and hammer away again. I’d fire five, maybe six rounds at a time. It only took a second or so longer to empty the gun this way, but you had much better control.

  Guns always run out of ammo much quicker than you think they will, but I was ready for it. The bolt on an M-16 locks back on the last shot, giving it a different feel. As soon as it happened I pushed the magazine release button with my trigger finger, sweeping the empty magazine out of the well with my left hand on the way to retrieve the new one. I slapped the new magazine home and hit the bolt release with the palm of my left hand, then I was back on the trigger, rocking and rolling.

  Back in my Ranger days, I’d practiced mag changes until my fingers bled. I’d won many beers betting nobody could beat my time of just over two seconds. It didn’t feel like I’d slowed down much.

  When the gun clicked dry again, I just stood there for a second, looking thr
ough the heat shimmer coming off the barrel of the rifle, at the spot where I’d seen the muzzle flash.

  After a few seconds of nothing, I figured if the guy wasn’t hit, he was at the very least suppressed.

  Dumping sixty rounds of rifle ammo in about thirty seconds isn’t very good for your hearing. My ears were ringing and everything sounded like it was underwater. I jerked another magazine out of Mickey’s chest rig and reloaded the rifle. He didn’t seem real keen on trading back so I flipped my shotgun around behind my back on its sling and decided to keep the rifle. Mickey just sat there, diligently watching the big empty field for bad guys.

  Al and Eddie came out of the van. Both of them were soaked with blood.

  “You get him?” Al asked. It was hard to hear him.

  I shrugged. “Not sure. He quit shooting. How’s the driver?”

  “Dead. I tried to save him, but he bled out.”

  There was a long burst of gunfire from over by the plane and somebody screamed. Al looked at me and Eddie, caught sight of the shotgun slung over my back and the rifle in my arms, looked at Mickey staring off into space with the cheap Brazilian revolver in his hands.

  I shrugged.

  “We need to get over there,” Al said, and took off running towards the Suburbans without waiting to see if anybody followed.

  Eddie and I took off behind him, forming a wedge with our guns pointed out. I spared Mickey one last glance. He was still staring off into space.

  We passed the two Suburbans first. They were sitting with their engines running and the doors open. There were a couple of bullet holes in the windshields and plenty of shell casings underfoot.

  Then we passed a body lying on the tarmac. It was one of Bolle’s guys. He was lying face down, arms outspread, with a long fan of blood and brain matter on the ground behind him and on his back. Nobody’s come up with a way to bulletproof your face yet.