The Spirit Banner

by Alex Archer

  Afterward, they hung out their freshly washed clothes to dry and enjoyed antelope steaks and fresh fish that night for dinner as the sun dipped over the horizon.

  It was almost enough to make Annja forget what they had been through the previous evening.

  Almost.

  26

  Ransom paced back and forth in the large Quonset hut he was using as his temporary headquarters, his irritation growing as the clock ticked onward. Turning to where Santiago sat in front of their communications equipment, he asked, "Any word from our new friends?"

  Warily, Santiago shook his head.

  "What the hell is keeping them?"

  "I don't know. Maybe they're still mopping things up."

  "All right, give them another hour."

  But when they hadn't reported in at the end of that time, Ransom's patience had worn thin; he'd finally had enough. "I'm tired of waiting around for someone else to do our work for us. Do we still have them on the trackers?"

  Wordlessly, Santiago spun the laptop that was sitting on the table in front of him in Ransom's direction, so that his boss could see the display. Three bright red dots marked the location of the three vehicles against a sea of green lighting.

  Near as Ransom could tell, they hadn't moved much since the night before. There they were, still clustered near one another in the same general place.

  "How fast can the chopper be ready?"

  "Five minutes, sir," Santiago replied, a hint of anticipation in his reply.

  Without taking his eyes off the screen, Ransom said, "Let's pay them a visit."

  Santiago pumped his fist in the air in agreement.

  Ten minutes later they were airborne and headed toward the rendezvous with their unsuspecting enemies. The chopper could cover the territory much faster and more efficiently than the trucks Davenport's men were using and so it didn't take long to get into position.

  Ransom held the laptop containing the tracking software on his lap, providing instructions to the pilot, while Santiago cradled his rifle in his arms, making certain the weapon was ready for action when he needed it.

  No more screwing around, Ransom thought.

  It didn't take long for their targets to grow closer on the screen and Ransom turned to be sure Santiago understood what he wanted.

  "Remember what I said."

  Santiago's eyes shone with excitement. "Yes, sir. Quick clean shots. Minimum damage to the vehicles if at all possible but collateral damage to the occupants is acceptable, even preferred, regardless of whether it is the tribesmen we hired or Davenport's team."

  That's what he liked about his lieutenant. You didn't have to spell everything out for him. He had initiative in spades.

  The targets were less than a mile out and Ransom gave the signal for the pilot to take it lower. He didn't want to give them any more warning than was necessary.

  The pilot took the chopper down low, and behind him Ransom felt Santiago slide open the side door and ready himself for what was to come.

  Screw you, Davenport, Ransom thought. Time for this little game to come to an end.

  He thought back to that day when Davenport had discovered his activities on the building project. The fool should have been happy that he'd found contractors willing to use the cheaper materials that he'd had shipped in when no one was looking. If they had finished the building the way he had planned, they would have saved eleven million dollars in construction costs alone, never mind what he could have done with the interior. So what if the structural engineers had claimed the building wouldn't hold together long-term; he'd have found another inspection firm who would have said the exact opposite. All that mattered was the money they were making.

  But Davenport hadn't agreed. Ransom had been humiliated and now he intended to return the favor. He'd be known worldwide as the man who found the lost tomb of Genghis Khan, and Davenport would be buried in a shallow grave in the middle of east nowhere, right where he belonged.

  A glance at the trackers showed their targets should be just over the next rise. Anticipation surged in his veins.

  "Get ready!" he shouted to Santiago, and the other man gave him the thumbs-up.

  Like an avenging angel—one of darkness, at least—the helicopter crested the ridge and Ransom looked through the windscreen, searching for the trucks on which the bugs had been planted back in Ulaanbaatar.

  At first, all he could see was brown scrub grass. Then the herd of wild horses that had been grazing on it burst into motion, surging left and right as they sought to escape the thunder of the mechanical bird above them.

  "Where are the trucks?" Santiago shouted.

  Ransom didn't know. Confused, he looked down at the tracker, noting that it showed all three of them almost directly below the helicopter.

  "They should be down there," he replied, pointing at the screen with his finger.

  But all they saw was horses.

  Ransom peered carefully down into the herd below him, looking for a sign, something to confirm what he suddenly suspected, something that would prove—

  There!

  A horse split off from the herd, the saddle on its back now clearly visible, the blip on the screen representing the tracking bug sliding away to the left just like the animal below them.

  Enraged, Ransom clambered in the back, grabbed the rifle from a bewildered Santiago and began firing at the galloping beast. It took him a couple of tries, but eventually one of his shots went true and the horse toppled forward to lie still in the grass.

  The pilot was ordered to land and Ransom got out, Santiago at his heels.

  The horse was still alive, though just barely, when they reached it. Ransom didn't care; all he wanted was to prove his suspicions were correct. Ignoring the animal's labored breathing, he dug around in its saddlebags until he found a folded piece of paper in which his tracking transponder had been placed.

  Drawn on the inside of the scrap of paper was a smiley face.

  Ransom screamed in fury at the sight.

  Without another word he turned and stalked back to where the helicopter was waiting.

  That was it, he thought. That was the last time Davenport or his minions were going to get the better of him. By the time this was over, their bodies would lie rotting beneath the Mongolian sun.

  He intended to make certain of it, if it was the last thing he did.

  27

  As the sun crept over the horizon it found Kent already up and about, preparing a quick breakfast of powdered eggs with Cukhbaatar's help. They had driven well into the night, not stopping until they had backtracked most of the way out of the Restricted Zone. The entire place gave Kent the creeps and he wanted to be rid of it as quickly as possible. He figured the tank base they had passed the day before was only another mile or two up the road, which meant they would be back on the steppes by midmorning at the latest.

  When he'd finally decided to call it quits for the night, he'd simply pulled over, turned off the lights and gone to sleep in the driver's seat, the other three men already snoring away in the back.

  He handed two plates to Cukhbaatar, one for him and one for Harris, and then shoveled his own share of the lukewarm eggs into his mouth before taking a plate over to D'Angelo. The wounded man could barely eat, the infection in his leg filling him with fever and threatening to overwhelm his immune system if he didn't reach a hospital soon.

  "Hang in there, man," Kent said, partially to himself, as he dosed D'Angelo up with another round of antibiotics and painkillers. He was starting to see the wisdom in Mason's decision to send them back.

  A few moments later they got under way once more.

  The first hour passed without incident and Kent was almost ready to cheer when they drove past the abandoned tank base right about the time he'd expected them to do so. The edge of the Restricted Zone wasn't too far ahead.

  Unfortunately, things weren't going to be that easy.

  It was Harris who saw it first. A quick glance, it was nothing m
ore than a dark speck framed against the clouds in the distance. But something about the way it moved bothered him and so he kept his eyes on it.

  A few moments later he was glad he had, for as he watched, it changed course slightly. Calculating quickly in his head, he could see that it had just moved from a parallel course to one that would intersect with their own in short order. His unease grew like a monstrous tendril deep in his gut.

  That's no eagle, a voice in the back of his head told him.

  He snatched the pair of binoculars out of the case he wore on his belt and brought them up to his face.

  Under the high-power magnification of the military-quality glasses, the dark speck suddenly resolved itself into the bulbous front end of a Soviet-made helicopter. A Gatling gun was mounted just beneath the cockpit and what looked like rocket pods or fuel tanks hung from the body of the aircraft.

  "Contact!" he shouted, so loudly that Kent flinched and nearly drove them into a ditch.

  "What the hell, Harris?" Kent swore, but the other man quickly cut him off.

  "We've got a military helicopter, exact model unknown, coming directly for us at two o'clock!"

  Even as he said it he was pulling out his rifle and rolling down his window. While they had no evidence that the helicopter meant them any harm, none of them could forget the description the boy at the monastery had given of the men with guns who had arrived in the helicopter and killed everyone in sight. This far out in the middle of nowhere, chances were better than good that the men in the helicopter worked for Ransom and that meant they were not going to be friendly.

  Harris knew it was crazy, thinking that he could cause any kind of significant damage to an armored chopper with just an assault rifle, but then again, stranger things had happened before. The Afghan mujahideen had fought the Soviet army to a standstill with weapons older than the one he now carried, hadn't they? So at least it was possible, right?

  He did his best not to think about how many Afghans the Soviets had killed in the process.

  "I see it," Kent said.

  Harris's only answer was to rack the slide on his rifle. With Kent behind the wheel and D'Angelo unconscious from his injuries, it was going to be up to him to defend them if it came down to it.

  Up front, Kent ordered Cukhbaatar to get down on the floor of the car beneath the dash, hoping the heaviness of the engine block would give the youth some protection. Then he began scanning the landscape, looking for somewhere that might provide them some measure of protection.

  There wasn't much.

  Most of the land in front of them was the same flat, rock-strewn landscape that they'd been driving through for the past several hours. Off in the distance he could see a few small rises, but it was going to take several long minutes to reach them.

  Kent drove grimly on.

  To their surprise, the chopper roared overhead, giving no indication that it cared about them at all.

  * * *

  A BOARD THE CHOPPER five hundred feet above, Santiago keyed the mike and informed Ransom that the vehicle below them was, indeed, from Davenport's group.

  "Good. Try to take them alive," Ransom replied. "They might know where Davenport is headed."

  Santiago gave directions to the pilot and the chopper swung about, angling downward and headed for a position to the side of the moving vehicle.

  * * *

  H ARRIS WAS WATCHING the helicopter through the rear window and as it swung back in their direction, he said, "They're turning about!"

  In the front of the truck, Kent swore loudly.

  There was no doubt about it now. Whoever was in that chopper wanted something from them and it didn't take a genius for them to guess what it might be.

  Kent's hands tightened on the wheel and his foot pushed down harder on the accelerator as he gave in to the instinct to run. But his mind kept returning to the same essential question.

  Where, exactly, were they going to go?

  * * *

  T HE CHOPPER TOOK UP POSITION to one side of the fleeing vehicle. Santiago reached for the minigun controls, a grin a mile wide splashed across his face.

  "Let's see what they think about this," he said happily and triggered the weapon.

  The minigun on the front end of the Mil-8 threw a line of 12 mm slugs across the truck's path.

  * * *

  "L OOK OUT !"

  The machine-gun fire cut across the road in front of them, forcing Kent to spin the wheel to the left to avoid it, bouncing off the narrow track they had been following and striking out overland, heading for the rocky outcroppings he'd spotted earlier.

  There was no way they were going to outrun the helicopter. That much was obvious. Nor did he think that the truck could withstand repeat attacks, not with that chain gun mounted on the front of the chopper.

  That left them only one option.

  They were going to have to fight it out.

  * * *

  S ANTIAGO LAUGHED ALOUD as the truck carrying Davenport's men abruptly left the road and headed overland. Go on and run, he thought. You won't get far, that's for sure.

  "Well?" Ransom asked.

  Santiago shook his head. "They aren't stopping, sir."

  "Then make them stop."

  "Roger that."

  Santiago turned to the gun controls once more.

  * * *

  T HE HELICOPTER MOVED AROUND in front of the truck and hovered a short ways off, the chain gun sending another stream of slugs ripping through the air toward them.

  Kent spun the wheel to the right this time, avoiding the majority of the gunfire. Still, more than a few slugs impacted against the side of the vehicle and stitched a line along the roof, shattering the window and sending small bits of glass flying through the interior. Sunlight streamed in through the new holes and the smell of cordite filled the car.

  "Everyone all right?" Kent shouted over the sound of the wind now whistling through the frame.

  "I'm good, I'm good." Harris had a few small cuts on his arms and face from the flying glass, but that was nothing given what could have happened. He checked D'Angelo and breathed easier when he saw that their companion had escaped unscathed. A long stream of Mongolian came from the floor of the front seat, which both Kent and Harris took to mean Cukhbaatar was all right, as well.

  "Where are they?" Kent asked, his eyes on the uneven terrain ahead of them, not daring to look away as he fought to keep them from inadvertently driving into a ditch or other obstacle.

  "Left side," Harris replied.

  Kent saw Harris's form suddenly fill his rearview mirror as the big man crossed to the other side of the vehicle, leaning over their wounded comrade.

  "What are you doing?" he asked.

  "Teaching them a lesson in predator-prey dynamics."

  As the helicopter came back into view, Harris stuck the muzzle of his automatic rifle out the remains of the window and held the trigger down.

  The stuttering roar of his weapon filled the car, drowning out his battle cry.

  * * *

  B ULLETS BOUNCED OFF the armored cockpit of the helicopter, causing the pilot to swerve up and out of the line of fire before they could do any damage. The Mil-8 had been built to withstand much more firepower than what was currently being thrown at it, but when they had the sky to themselves, why take chances?

  Santiago told the pilot to get behind the moving vehicle and keep moving from side to side as he sent stream after stream of 12 mm slugs in their direction.

  He was enjoying this.

  * * *

  A ND SO IT WENT .

  The chopper would make an attack run, Kent would do his best to avoid it and a little more of their vehicle would be obliterated as a result. By the fourth or fifth pass—Kent wasn't certain which it was as he'd already lost count—things were going from bad to worse inside the truck. Both he and Harris had minor gunshot wounds; he from a ricochet that carved a furrow past his left ear and Harris from a round that had gone straight through his fo
ot. D' Angelo, on the other hand, was dead. A line of slugs had stitched their way along that side of the vehicle and his body had jittered with the impacts while his blood had splashed over the other two men and the boy indiscriminately.

  Kent estimated that they'd lost about fifteen percent of their engine power and a loud clanking noise was coming from under the hood somewhere. The rear tire on the passenger side had been shot out, as well, and they were now rolling along on what was left of the tread and rim.

  The terrain wasn't helping them, either. All of the wild maneuvering Kent was doing was kicking up great clouds of dirt and dust, obscuring their view of both the road ahead of them and of the helicopter behind.