Seasons of Man | Book 2 | Reap What You Sow

by Anderson, S. M.

  And you’re an asshole . . . “It’s not that simple. I’ve never flown anything like this.” Calhoun repeated what he’d been saying for the last week to anyone who would listen.

  He’d learned to fly helicopters thirty years ago at a civilian crop-duster school outside of Richmond. It was a career that had lasted him all of three years. The local farmers had stopped growing tobacco, and he’d quit to go to work for an aerial surveying company. His actual flying time with that company had been infrequent at first and then disappeared altogether as commercial satellite imagery really took off. He hadn’t flown a helicopter in over twenty years and was regretting ever having mentioned that he could.

  “You’ve been studying up on the manuals, right?”

  “Sure,” he admitted, before pointing at a bank of switches in front of his right knee. “See those? I’ve no fucking idea what they do; they weren’t in the manual.” He could see the nervousness light in the younger man’s eyes, and he reveled in it. “Still want to come along? Because I’m guessing the maintenance crew have been reading the same manuals that I have. We’re relying on guys who used to service your dad’s car.” Which wasn’t exactly true; Calhoun had more confidence in the ground crew, which included a genuine mechanical engineer, than he did in his own ability to actually fly the damn thing. They brought it here on a flatbed and then put the word out for a pilot as they worked on it all winter long.

  He’d been just stupid enough to mention that he had some flying experience. The role had promised a bigger room, one without roommates, and a more robust meal ticket. He’d have done for the room alone; at his age, he was way past wanting to share a dorm room. Especially with somebody who had to have been threatened with violence to avail themselves of the showers they had running in the gym complex.

  Mackey held up a hand while he donned his flight helmet and plugged it into the cockpit’s intercom system. “Do you want to go tell General Marks that you are unable to perform this mission?”

  “Mission? I thought we were just going to overfly the freeway to the east?”

  “Depends what we find.” Mackey was yelling unnecessarily into his mic over the sound of the turbine spinning up. “We may have you drop us off out there.”

  “Who’s us?” he asked, just prior to four of General Marks’s soldiers piling in through the starboard door. One look at their gear, and he realized they were all members of Marks’s assault squad. Some of them, he’d heard, had been actual soldiers at one time or another; others were civilians who just really enjoyed playing at it. Who was he to complain? It wasn’t like he was a real pilot either.

  He did a quick scan of his temps and pressures and didn’t see anything that struck him as out of the ordinary. There were too many damned screens and buttons that he didn’t recognize to worry about it. He knew the fancy displays and a lot of the inputs were related to navigation, autopilot, communications, damage control, and a rash of other shit he had no business monkeying around with or had the time to learn. He carefully engaged power to the rotor. He caught sight of General Marks standing outside, at a safe distance, next to Lisa Cooper, as he looked out the cockpit to confirm the blades had started turning. Marks was flashing him a big thumbs-up with a shit-eating grin on his face. He responded in kind, knowing something dramatic was expected. Asshole . . .

  Ten minutes later, they had completed the second slow circuit of the campus, and he was starting to believe he might survive the flight. He’d had a moment back there when he’d learned just how heavy this bird was; he hadn’t had enough collective lift engaged as he banked the helicopter, and they’d lost a hundred feet of altitude in the blink of an eye. He’d corrected quickly; the interaction of the collective and cyclic worked via the same laws of physics as the old Bell he’d flown, spraying tobacco fields.

  “We good?” Mackey looked a little less sure than he had a moment ago.

  “All good,” he lied. “Just getting a feel for it.” He proceeded south to the freeway and started bending their flight path east when it came into view.

  Even from their location on the top floor of the practice tower of the fire station, they heard the Black Hawk well before they spotted it. They’d had a heads-up; the UH-60 had overflown one of his scout teams alongside the freeway to the west, a few minutes before.

  “Tell me when, sir.”

  Skirjanek knew Elliot was referring to initiating the battery on the launcher. The Stinger was a great weapon, but its battery and infrared targeting acquisition required a coolant that ran on compressed argon gas. The system would be operable for less than a minute after it was initiated. There were two spare battery coolant units in the open case at their feet, but he knew from personal experience that having to switch the BCU out when you were in the middle of setting up a shot was never good.

  “Not yet, Mr. Elliot. Don’t energize the seeker until I say.”

  “Affirmative, sir. I will remind you that the FIM-92 J variant requires time to cool the targeting unit, necessitating a lag time of approximately ten seconds. High ambient temperature may increase that interval by as much as an additional five seconds, sir.”

  He glanced over at the young man. “I thought you said you hadn’t fired one before.”

  “I have not, sir. I read the manual once, sir.”

  And memorized it, apparently . . . No one quite knew what to make of Sergeant Elliot. The kid was more than a little off. He’d asked then Sergeant Bruce about it early on, wondering if the time in The Hole had affected him adversely. Bruce had said the kid came out of advanced infantry training like that, and had test scores that were off the charts. Anybody who interacted with him socially just came away thinking the guy was a little off and maybe a lot slow.

  “Do you have an eidetic memory, Mr. Elliot? I have a hunch you know what the word means.”

  “I don’t know, sir. I do remember things I read, sir. If they interest me.”

  “Such as the operation of a Stinger missile system?”

  “Anything associated with the Marine Corps, sir.”

  “Outstanding, Mr. Elliot.” He could see the Black Hawk now, moving slowly towards them over the freeway. “I have eyes on our target, but are we going to continue this discussion?”

  “Yes, sir. I have eyes on as well, sir.”

  Drew pushed his lapel mic. “All units, remain under cover. Enemy air overhead.” Nothing to see here, nothing at all . . .

  *

  “I don’t see shit!” Mackey shouted into his headset. “They must have bugged out?”

  Calhoun had arced the helicopter south at the freeway interchange and followed Highway 15 for two miles before doing a wide, slow, 180-degree turn and starting back north. Mackey’s confidence aside, he wasn’t so sure. This was a good place to hide; the area had a lot of businesses with big buildings or garages to store vehicles out of sight. That included the DOT vehicle repair lot and its half dozen barnlike structures they’d just overflown. In addition to the subdivisions of housing, there was even a newish-looking hotel next to the freeway where the bad guys could be bunking.

  “You didn’t expect them to be on the streets waving flags at us, did you?” There was something strange about the stretch of highway that he couldn’t put a name on.

  “Looks empty to me,” Mackey replied.

  That was it! No cars stalled out or left on the road. They’d cleared the area. “Somebody sure as shit has been here, no cars on the road. And take a look at that parking lot next to the hotel.” The asphalt surrounding the parking lot was chewed to shit, like what the tanks and APCs did to the roads around campus if the drivers weren’t careful.

  “Sure enough!” Mackey agreed and then flashed something with his hand to his asshole buddies in the back. “They look to be gone now though. Set us down in that clear space in front of the hotel. We’ll check that out.”

  “You nuts?” he yelled. “What if they’re just hiding?”

  “Just do it,” Mackey yelled back. “The mission is to
try and get a head count on them. We will recon the area—might be able to see how many rooms in that hotel look lived in.”

  He wanted to argue in the worst way. Not just because the nineteen-year-old ROTC student wannabe was so fucking stupid, but also because his last name was Calhoun and he came from a long line of assholes who called bullshit when they saw it. “You’re putting the helo at risk. You have no idea what’s down there.”

  It almost worked; he could see the indecision on the kid’s face. It was followed by a firm shake of his helmeted head. “I’m in command of this mission. Put us down.”

  The rotor wash kicked up a year’s worth of debris and trash that had blown into the area. Part of it was his fault; he hovered just off the ground for far too long, but hell, it wasn’t like he was a real pilot or anything.

  “Just wait for us here. We’ll be right back.”

  He wanted to bite the idiot’s head off, but he knew the kid had only completed a single year of college before the virus had hit. Mackey was as out of his depth as he was, sitting in the cockpit of a Black Hawk helicopter, wondering if he could remember how to safely shut the turbine down. Fuck me . . .

  Drew dropped his binoculars against his chest and gave his head a shake after watching the five occupants of the helicopter enter the hotel. “Bring the jeep around, Corporal. Leave the Stinger.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He watched the Marine pound down the metal stairs of the fire station tower and pressed his mic. “Gypsy One for Corporal Uwasi and Mr. Reed—roll your teams to the hotel. Stay on 15, do not turn in. Weapons hold unless fired on.”

  *

  He had the flight manual open on his lap, trying to make sense of the controls and readouts in front of him. The helicopter creaked and groaned with contracting metal sounds as it cooled down. He could only hope those noises were ‘normal’. Mackey and his “team” had been gone for just a few minutes, and he took the lack of gunfire as a good sign. Maybe he’d just been paranoid.

  The sound of boots landing in the metal compartment and the barrel of the gun inches from his head when he turned around argued otherwise.

  *

  “Shit! Where the hell is he?” Scott Mackey asked the universe. They’d already looked around the helo. He’d sent one of his guys back into the hotel in the hopes that Calhoun had gone in after them. No such luck.

  Wells spoke up. “Dude! That cranky old coot either took off, or he was taken. If he was taken, we need to get the hell out of here, now!”

  David Wells was the oldest of his team and might have been pushing forty. He at least had some military experience; he was a former campus policeman and had done a stint as a military contractor, some kind of gate guard in Afghanistan, a decade ago.

  “What about the chopper?”

  His team just looked back at him in expectation that he should be able to answer his own question. He didn’t know what to do. General Marks was going to go ballistic, and Miss Cooper . . . he didn’t even want to think about her reaction. He wondered if running away might be his best move at this point.

  Wells took a step forward and waved at the rest of them to follow. “We sure as shit aren’t going to carry it. Let’s go!”

  *

  Their “prisoner” let out an angry cackle at the sight of his former passengers cutting through the narrow strip of trees separating the hotel’s lot from the freeway. “Serves the stupid little bastard right!”

  It was not a reaction Drew had been expecting. He was seated in a booth inside the IHOP that shared a parking lot with the Best Western. He’d been holding a gun on the pilot while he watched the enemy soldiers argue with one another. Reed and a dozen of his team were quietly doing the same thing, across the interior perimeter of the restaurant that still smelled like old coffee and maple syrup.

  “Gypsy One—Poy, do you have eyes on?”

  “Affirmative, Gypsy One—they are on foot—westbound on the on-ramp, sir.”

  “Holy shit!” The pilot, who appeared to be in his early sixties, slapped the table with an open hand. “You’re real soldiers, aren’t you?” He looked around at the members of Reed’s team and shook his head. “I told him you all were probably hiding. But he was feeling his oats.” The pilot snorted in derision. “In charge and all that. Little shit had no idea what he was doing.”

  Drew holstered his gun and just looked across the table for a moment before extending his hand with a smile. “I’m Colonel Drew Skirjanek, former US Army. You are not a prisoner. You can do what you like; we’ll even help you do it. But there’s a place for you here if you want it.”

  The old man just nodded once to himself and then gripped his hand firmly. “Name’s Tim, Tim Calhoun, and Colonel . . .” The old man gave his hand another pump. “Before you ask—I am NOT a pilot. Nearly shit myself twice just getting here.”

  Drew smiled to himself and started laughing along with his first pilot. Another piece fell into place.

  Chapter 26

  You don’t have to talk to me, if you don’t feel like it,” Jason said, glancing at Pro across the cab of the JLTV. “But trust me, I’ve been there. You need to talk. Building walls around yourself isn’t the answer.” He wondered if he sounded as much like a hypocrite as he felt. He and Rachel had given Pro his space for the week since Daniel’s burial; until a moment ago, he had been content to leave the teenager alone. For his part, Pro had been content to provide one- or two-word answers and then shut down.

  “I’m OK . . .”

  Riiiight . . . He let it go and concentrated on his surroundings. They hadn’t seen any of the road bandits Gabe had reported spotting a week ago, but as they passed through Culpepper, headed south on Highway 15 back to the Gypsies’ camp, his head was on a swivel at every crossroad.

  “Nothing we say is going to bring Daniel back.” Pro sounded like he wanted to argue, but it was more words strung together than there had been in some time.

  “No, it won’t. Neither will shutting out everyone else.”

  “You did.”

  And there it was; it wasn’t something he could even try to deny. “And I almost paid for it with my life, yours, Rachel’s and a whole lot of innocents. I wasn’t myself for a long time after my wife died, Pro. It wasn’t losing her and all that happened afterward that drove me to shut everyone else out—I was just flat-out scared. I caught myself starting to care again, after I promised myself I wouldn’t. Pro, look at me . . .”

  Pro finally turned to face him after wiping at his eyes. “I care about you as much as anyone I have left in this world, but I am not a role model. That was Daniel’s gift; he believed in the future. Don’t waste it.”

  “Nothing’s ever going to be fair again, will it?”

  “Fair?”

  “He was just trying to build something.” Pro was almost shouting. “The future he was always talking about—it’s not right . . . why was he the one killed?”

  It wasn’t fair; life never had been fair. He doubted if it ever would be. “Daniel’s not the first person I’ve been close to who I’ve lost—and I don’t mean my wife or what the virus did to all of us. Years ago . . .” He stopped himself, wondering if telling this story would only make it worse. But Pro was looking back at him in expectation, engaged, present for the first time in a week.

  “Tell me.”

  “It was in Afghanistan . . . my squad made it out of a two-day running battle. It was bad; there were fourteen of us, and we had almost that many gunshot wounds between us. We were shot to hell, low on ammo, water, and time. If air support and reinforcements hadn’t gotten to us when they did, I doubt if any of us would have made it out of that mountain pass.

  “One of my sergeants, Roger Lewis Smith—we called him ‘Smithy’—came through it all without a scratch. He was as good a soldier, a man, and a friend as they come. He got a Bronze Star for what he did over those three days; the guy was amazing, always joking. Kept me and everyone else loose and able to think, which is to say he helped keep us a
live.

  “We were back at our forward operating base a day later; he was one of about four or five guys who were actually on their feet. He got hit by a single mortar round lobbed out of the surrounding hills by a kid about your age. Smithy had just left the phone shack, where he’d been able to talk to his wife on a sat-phone. She’d just told him that he was going to be a dad.

  “It’s never been fair, Pro. Not ever.” It had been a long time since he’d thought of Smithy. “Maybe that was the reason I pushed so hard just to get you, Rachel, and Elsa out of this, go find a place where we could hide. But we decided we weren’t going to run. Daniel and what he thought we could build was a big part of that decision. I’m more convinced now than I was before we lost Daniel. It is the right decision. But it’s not a game.”

  “I didn’t—”

  He stopped whatever Pro was about to say with a wave of his hand. “The bad guys get to vote too. So does Murphy.”

  “I know.”

  He watched as Pro wiped at his eyes. Part of him felt sorry for the kid, given the world he had left to grow up in, even knowing it wasn’t pity that Pro wanted or needed. He knew what Pro needed, and it was scary how much he wanted to give it to him.

  “Daniel didn’t want you to have to fight at all; but I think even he got his head around the fact that it’s what you have left—that it’s part of who you are. It took me a while to get there myself. He wouldn’t want you to forget the people you’re fighting for or to push them away.”

  Pro sat up a little higher. “You’re right. I know.”

  “You good?”

  Pro didn’t answer for a long moment. He shook his head and let out a deep breath that he’d been holding. “I think so, thanks.”

  “Thanks? For what?”

  “For not treating me like a kid.”

  He had to lean across the width of the cab to punch Pro in the shoulder. “We’ll get through this.”