by Noah Mann
There was nothing more to do here. Not now. I looked to Elaine.
“I’ll be lead,” I said.
She nodded and I stepped past her, about to continue our patrol with Lorenzen and Westin when we heard the sound. Coughing at first. Then a voice. So soft as to be unintelligible.
“The garrison was only five?” I asked Lorenzen.
He nodded and brought his M4 up, taking aim toward the sound, its source seeming to come from a building just down the street. What had been a restaurant, according to signage that still showed above the door. The sidewalk in front was littered with glass, long windows which had spread across its façade shattered.
“Two and two,” Lorenzen said.
Elaine and I crossed to the side of the street where the restaurant was located. Lorenzen and Westin crept forward past the piled bodies, slowly, weapons tracking the source of the sound. Every few steps Westin would take a look behind, scanning for an ambush. But none came. The two soldiers reached a point directly across the street from the restaurant and stopped, their weapons pointed straight through the missing front window. He motioned with one hand for Elaine and me to approach.
We moved along the wall until we were at the edge of the shattered windows, door between the two open frames. I leaned and peered inside. The space was dim, but not dark. A small amount of trash and debris was scattered about within, evidence of some scavenging long ago. Booths that had once held a lunchtime crowd were empty and dusted with the grey grit which had blown in from blighted trees. One chair was toppled. It looked little different than any of the millions of homes and businesses left abandoned across the globe.
Except for the Russian soldier lying on the counter, hand pressed against a bandage upon his stomach that was soaked red.
I reached with my free hand and motioned for Lorenzen and Westin to approach. They crossed the street with weapons up and forward. Elaine stepped around me, her MP5 trained into the restaurant so that we all now had eyes on the enemy.
“Watch our six,” Lorenzen said.
“Got it,” Elaine said, turning away from the building to cover the street and buildings beyond.
Neil was right. Not that I didn’t know that. She was a hard charger. While entering the building here might be seen as the dangerous part of any maneuver, she was placing herself in a position where she was alone. And vulnerable. I had to fight the urge to tell her I would take the outside position, and have her go in with the trained soldiers. I had to wipe that worry from my mind.
I had to.
“Watch for traps,” Lorenzen said.
Westin stepped through the broken window first, weapon aimed at the Russian, the man mumbling in his native language.
“Be careful,” I said to Elaine, and she glanced briefly at my, almost confused by what I’d said.
“Go,” Lorenzen said.
I had no more opportunity to express concern. I followed Westin in, Lorenzen just behind me. We scanned the way ahead for trip wires, but nothing stood out.
The Russian mumbled loudly but didn’t turn his head our way. His gaze remained fixed on the ceiling above.
“Check the back,” Lorenzen told Westin.
The private moved past the Russian as the sergeant and I kept our weapons on him. Less than a minute later he returned, his weapon lowered.
“Nothing,” Westin said. “Back door is barred from inside.”
Lorenzen brought the muzzle of his M4 up, directing it at the ceiling as he stepped close to the Russian and checked him for traps on his body, or weapons nearby.
“AK on the floor,” Lorenzen said.
Westin stepped behind the counter and retrieved the weapon, checking the mag and chamber.
“Empty,” Westin said, then set the rifle down on a nearby table.
“Elaine,” Lorenzen called out. “Inside.”
She joined us in a half circle ogling the bleeding Russian.
“He’s in uniform,” she said.
“Not an infiltrator,” I said.
“He’s one of them,” Westin said with disgust. “The ones who killed those men out there. Those Americans.”
“We know that, private,” Lorenzen said, looking around the space as he thought for a moment. “Watch the prisoner.”
Lorenzen moved across the space and stepped through the shattered frontage where windows had once protected the restaurant from the elements. I watched him step into the street and aim his M4 at the sky before squeezing off two fast shots, waiting for a few seconds, then firing two more. That done, the signal sent, he hurried back inside and joined us next to the dying Russian.
“We have to keep him alive,” Lorenzen said.
“Why?” Westin asked, not challenging his superior, but allowing some disdain for the thought of assisting one who’d been party to eliminating the Juneau garrison.
“Because Enderson is miles from here and he’s the only one of us who speaks Russian,” Lorenzen said.
“He might know something,” Elaine said, agreeing.
The Russian lay before us, his lips moving almost constantly as he stared at the ceiling, hands folded atop his bloodied midsection.
“He’s saying something,” I said.
Maybe it was a prayer. To save him. Or to end his suffering.
Lorenzen turned to Westin, an urgency about him.
“Go back to the boat and get Hart,” the sergeant said. “Have him bring his kit.”
Elaine grabbed her pack from the floor and slipped into it.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“No one should be alone here,” she said. “I’ll go and stay with Acosta at the boat so Westin can bring Hart here.”
It was a logical decision. One that Lorenzen blessed with a crisp nod toward Elaine. But it also meant that she’d be out of my sight.
“Make it fast,” the sergeant said.
Before Elaine headed for the exit I took hold of her hand.
“You stay safe,” I told her.
She leaned close and kissed me, the expression of emotion, and the delay it caused, seeming to agitate Westin.
“Anytime,” he said, impatient.
Elaine eased away and moved past Westin, the private giving me a look, both harsh and jealous, before he, too, made his way out of the building.
“You’ve gotta realize where the attitude comes from,” Lorenzen said to me once they were gone.
“Where’s that?”
“From a dead wife and a dead child he couldn’t get home to before others did,” the sergeant said.
How many stories like that were out there, still salting the psychic wounds of those who’d survived them?
“Where?” I asked.
“He was stationed in Japan,” Lorenzen answered. “They were in Omaha. Nice and safe in middle America.”
“Except they weren’t,” I said.
“Correct.”
The Russian spoke suddenly louder, his guttural stream of words, nonsense to us, holding some greater meaning to him. He grimaced and clutched his abdomen and seemed to struggle through a half dozen breaths before whatever wave of agony had coursed through him subsided. Once more he stared at the ceiling, avoiding our gazes, and spoke almost silently.
“Hart better hurry,” I said.
“Everyone better hurry,” Lorenzen corrected.
Twenty Five
Westin returned with our medic in just under half an hour. Hart checked the Russian’s wounds and monitored his vitals for a few minutes before starting an IV and motioning us to a corner away from the man.
“He doesn’t have much time,” Hart said.
“How long is not much?” Lorenzen asked.
Hart thought for a moment, looking past Westin and me to the man who was now his patient.
“He’s bleeding internally and he’s aspirating blood. The plasma will keep his pressure up, but not for long.”
“I haven’t heard any shots acknowledging your signal,” I told the sergeant.
&nbs
p; He looked to Westin.
“Either of you hear three shots while you were out there?”
“No, sergeant,” Westin answered.
“Just your four when I was at the boat,” Hart said.
It had been the agreed upon method of communication. Four shots in a groups of two was supposed to bring the other patrol toward the sound of the gunfire, acknowledging it with three shots as they made their way. But there had been no response. The communication, it seemed, was only one way. That could mean they hadn’t heard, the terrain and buildings reflecting the sharp sounds so that they were lost in the blustery wind.
Or it could mean they were unable to reply.
I forced that dark thought down and looked to the sergeant.
“If they couldn’t hear it before, maybe they can now.”
Lorenzen considered my suggestion, then stepped outside and into the street, firing the two groups of double taps into the air.
Hardly a second later there came three fast shots. Shots that were fired not from some distance, but close. As I watched Lorenzen react to the reply, I saw him raise his M4 into the air, holding it so his arm and the weapon formed a T.
“Here!” he shouted, and a minute later the second patrol reached us.
Neil came through the window opening and eyed the Russian as he stood next to me.
“You guys made fast work of that,” I said.
“Nothing to make work of,” my friend said. “The whole north end of the city, everything past twin lakes, is rubble. Burned to the ground. Just completely devastated.”
My friend looked over the interior of the restaurant.
“Where’s Elaine?”
“She took Hart’s place watching over the boat,” I explained.
Neil nodded. Accepting that. He didn’t push any more of his fear on me, but I knew he was thinking it. Was feeling it.
“Specialist,” Schiavo said as she entered the building after conferring with her sergeant outside.
“Ma’am,” Hart said, stepping away from the patient and prisoner.
“He can talk?”
“He can,” Hart said. “How much he’ll understand I don’t know. He took four rounds between his sternum and his navel. Tight grouping. Someone was a good shot.”
Schiavo looked over her shoulder and motioned Enderson forward with a look.
“You’re up,” she told him. “Get his basics.”
Enderson said something in Russian to the man and his gaze angled toward the private. He hesitated for a moment, then spoke, softly.
“His name is Lentov,” Enderson shared. “He’s a, I think it’s a sergeant, or some similar rank.”
Schiavo stood where she knew that Lentov could see her.
“Ask him what happened to the soldiers outside,” Schiavo said.
Enderson did, listening as the Russian answered in a voice that was becoming more whisper by the minute. When the wounded man had finished, Enderson looked to us, disgust in his gaze.
“He says Kuratov ordered them executed because they shot him,” Enderson. “He found them while the Russians were searching for the garrison and all hell broke loose. The garrison surrendered when they were surrounded and Kuratov threatened to blow up the building they were barricaded in.”
Schiavo absorbed that, fighting a rise of anger I could tell. We all were. The man had just described how our countrymen had been shot down after laying down their arms. I flashed back to the moment when Neil had executed the cannibals near my refuge, but that action was in response to the murder of three innocent human beings whose lives had been cut short so they could be parted out and used as food. This, what we were hearing, what we were witness to, this was not that.
This was cold blooded murder.
“Ask him about Mary Island,” Schiavo instructed.
I listened as Enderson translated his lieutenant’s question and as Lentov replied.
“He says Kuratov sent a small group to take the lighthouse to block the channel, or raid ships, I’m not sure,” Enderson said. “He’s telling it both ways.”
“They could have done to anyone what Jeremy did to us,” I said. “Use the light to lure them in, then take them down.”
“Stationary piracy,” Elaine said.
Our happening upon Mary Island had, strangely, set in motion its liberation from the Russians. That realization was incredibly odd. It was a situation, a scenario, that none of us would have anticipated as we left Bandon.
The blighted world, we had learned many times over now, was full of dark and dangerous surprises.
“Ask him where the others are,” Schiavo instructed.
Enderson spoke again, and listened again, leaning closer to the Russian to catch the response he was offering.
“They left him,” Enderson said. “They’d already raided Ketchikan and Juneau, so they were heading north to the next objective.”
Neil’s face flushed red with fury.
“Skagway?” Schiavo asked, and Enderson nodded.
“He says they had an insider in Ketchikan who’d heard from the soldiers there about a place with plentiful supplies north of there,” Enderson added.
“He just worked his way up the coast,” Lorenzen said.
“How long ago did they leave?” Schiavo asked. “And how did they travel?”
Once more Enderson spoke and listened.
“He thinks he’s been laying here for three days,” Enderson said. “They came by boat, so he thinks that’s how the rest of the unit continued on.”
“How many men?”
Enderson relayed the lieutenant’s question.
“Eighteen without him,” Enderson said.
The Russian muttered something, looking not at the ceiling anymore. His gaze was fixed fully on Schiavo.
“Pistolet,” Lentov said, his gaze tracking down to the weapon holstered on the lieutenant’s right thigh. “Pistolet.”
One of the hands pressing against the wounds on his abdomen rose a bit, fingers extended, as if reaching toward Schiavo’s sidearm.
The Russian wanted his suffering to end. He wanted to die. By his own hand.
“Let him rot,” Westin said in reaction to the Russian’s implied desire.
Schiavo said nothing. Not to the Russian, and not to her vocal private. She simply stared at Lentov for a moment before turning to Hart.
“How long might he lay here without attention?”
The medic thought. Searching for some exactness in the imprecise situation.
“Hours,” Hart said. “Days. He’s hydrated now. The bleeding is slow. But unless he gets to a trauma center, he’s not going to make it.”
The prognosis since Hart first saw the Russian hadn’t changed, just the timing. Treatment had somewhat stabilized him. The inevitable was being delayed.
“Eric,” Schiavo said, looking to me. “Do you have a throwaway piece?”
A throwaway piece. An extra handgun. Something small, easily hidden, and not important enough to care about if it was lost, or bartered away for something more valuable at the moment. It had never come to that for me, but I had been prepared for the time that it might.
“I have a small nine,” I said.
“Mind if I take that off your hands?” Schiavo asked.
I didn’t answer. I simply reached to the pack I’d set in a nearby booth and retrieved the weapon from within.
“One round,” Schiavo said. “In the chamber. Then gear up.”
I already had one in the chamber, so I dropped the magazine and put it back into my pack before slipping into it.
“Here,” I said, handing the small Glock to Schiavo.
“Sergeant, keep this man covered,” Schiavo said. “Everyone else outside.”
We stepped through the shattered windows and watched Schiavo lay the pistol on Lentov’s chest before backing away, Lorenzen covering her as she, and then he, joined us outside and moved out of any line of fire from within.
“Westin, on point.”
&n
bsp; “Yes, ma’am,” the private acknowledged, leading off, the rest of us falling in behind.
The shot sounded when we were halfway down the block. Schiavo never slowed. She kept moving, weapon at the ready, a few yards behind Westin, her point man.
“Sergeant,” she said.
“Ma’am,” Lorenzen answered, speeding up to be nearer his commander.
“We’re not spending the night. Have a detail bury the bodies and mark the location. Then get everyone back to the boat so we can get the hell out of here.”
Twenty Six
We cruised out of Juneau at sundown, sailing south through the Gastineau Channel until we reached Tantallon Point and swung to the west, then north again, Douglas Island off our starboard side. No more stops lay between us and Skagway.
“Thirteen, maybe fourteen hours,” Acosta said as he steered the boat from the captain’s chair.
I stood with him, glassing the way ahead. Scanning for anything and everything he, or Schiavo, should know about. This was the routine, one on the wheel, and one on lookout duty, switching out with others as we progressed. Some slept. Others ate. Neil sat on the deck near the stern and cleaned his AK while there was still useful daylight.
“Then we’ll know,” I said.
“Know what?”
“If we’re too late,” I answered.
I looked back to the waters ahead. Neil had told me that there was always hope. Those words had kept me going after being shot near my refuge, and the fullness of that belief had held all the way to my friend’s arrival with Grace and Krista. They had saved me, nursing me back to health. That would have never happened, though, if I hadn’t had hope.
Here, now, I needed that more than ever, because everything we’d come across on our journey north pointed to an outcome that was almost impossible to fathom. Hundreds of innocents were likely in Skagway. And a unit of foreign troops, willing to kill, was almost certainly already there. They’d beaten us.
That was my worry. That was the reality that quelled the hope I wanted to have. We might reach our destination and find that the trip had been for naught. What evidence we might find there to confirm that fear I did not want to even imagine.
“Your friend wants to be ready,” Schiavo commented as she came up from below.