Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  Gunter took a seat and closed his eyes. What a defeat. What an incredible defeat. I hope the Russians will still release Helma. They will have to. I did what I was told and the results . . . well, I can’t control the results. We were prepared, but we made mistakes. We rushed our attack. We did not have enough people. I followed the FSB’s orders. They wanted a swift but small attack. We underestimated the Canadians and their reaction. They discovered our plans and ambushed us. Yes, that’s what I will say, and the Russians better accept it. I’ll not allow myself to be jerked around by them anymore.

  * * *

  “Carrie, Amaruq. Carrie,” Justin kept shouting, as he reached the end of the hillside. He had searched the nearby area twice, without finding any trace of Carrie. Amaruq had disappeared as well. “Carrie, Amaruq, can you hear me? Carrie, Amaruq, where are you?” he repeated his shouts.

  He noticed a large metallic object jutting out from the snow. He dropped to his knees and began sifting through the snow. Debris from the crashed helicopter was littering the area. Justin was careful to avoid any cuts by the sharp edges. He lifted some twisted parts of what seemed to be the helicopter’s passenger door. He almost jumped with joy because of what he found underneath the wreckage. After brushing the snow to the side, he uncovered a Kevlar helmet. He stared at Carrie’s ice-cold and pale face.

  “Carrie,” Justin whispered in her ear. He felt at the side of her neck for a pulse. He found it, barely throbbing, slow and irregular, but still beating. “Stay . . . stay with me,” he whispered. “Don’t die on me now.” He drew in a deep breath. “Help,” he shouted, but his voice wheezed out only slightly louder than a whisper. He coughed to clear his throat before trying again, “Help, help. I need some help here. Help.”

  A couple of men sprinted toward him.

  “I’ve found Carrie,” he said. “Let’s get her out.”

  “The chopper’s pilot,” one of the men mumbled.

  “Yes,” the other man replied quietly.

  “Let’s be gentle when we move her,” Justin said. “Take the clips out, and make a stretcher with those rifles.”

  A third man arrived to lend them a hand. They threw their jackets over two rifles and used scarves and belts to form a somewhat sturdy stretcher. They placed Carrie over it and began to tread slowly toward the runway.

  “Hey, hey, driver,” Justin shouted at a man in the driver’s seat of a truck by the airport terminal. “We need your truck. Hurry up!”

  The man stepped on the gas and rolled the truck to a stop by Justin’s feet.

  “Open the door, the back door,” Justin said.

  They placed Carrie in the backseats, her head resting carefully on a jacket rolled up as a pillow. Her arms and feet hung unnaturally.

  “I’ll take over from here.” Justin dismissed the men and climbed in the driver’s seat. “Hold on, Carrie,” he said. “I will not let you die.”

  Only if we had a doctor out here.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Nanisivik, Canada

  April 14, 11:54 a.m.

  “Emily, what in the world are you doing here?” Justin could not contain his enthusiasm in seeing the nurse awaiting their arrival at the top of the hill. She was holding a box in her left hand. The words FIRST AID and a large white cross were embossed on its side.

  “I told you I was coming. But it seems I missed most of the party. Then they told me you were bringing up a patient.” Emily hurried to the other side of the truck. “How is Carrie doing?”

  “I don’t know. She’s unconscious.”

  Emily looked for Carrie’s pulse at the side of her neck and began to check her vitals. She lifted Carrie’s head up to make sure there were no obstructions in her airways. Then she leaned closer to Carrie’s mouth, feeling for any sign of respiration.

  “Unzip her jacket and lift up her sweater,” Emily said.

  The skin of Carrie’s neck and upper chest had turned a yellowish-gray. It felt numb and frozen. Her chest was rising and falling, but very slowly.

  “Her breathing’s shallow, but her lungs are getting some oxygen,” Emily said. “Which is good, at least for now.”

  Justin’s eyes were glued to a blue blister on Carrie’s neck.

  “Cryopathy, I mean frostbite, hasn’t set in yet,” Emily said after catching Justin’s gaze. “Once we warm her up, the skin will be fully restored, since superficial frostbite is reversible.”

  Justin nodded in silence. Emily listened for a heartbeat.

  “The heart rate is slow, very slow and irregular. What exactly happened to her?”

  “She was in the chopper, piloting the Seahawk, when it was shot down. She had to jump out of the chopper.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, it was quite a distance.”

  Emily examined Carrie’s arms and legs, paying special attention not to move her, and focusing mostly on her joints.

  “At first sight, it looks like her legs are fractured, but I can’t be sure. There may be internal bleeding in her chest and also in the abdomen, since the ribcage is easily affected by blunt trauma.”

  Justin swallowed and looked away.

  “Carrie’s alive,” Emily said, “but we need to take her to a hospital as fast as we can. I have a few things in the truck to stabilize her for a while, but we’ve got to get her to a hospital. ASAP.”

  * * *

  Joe arrived in his truck when Justin was getting ready for the drive to Nanisivik. Ned was riding in the passenger’s seat. His eyes were puffy and red, bearing the clear marks of tears, even though he had tried to dry them out. “How’s she doing?” Joe asked, while Ned stared out the window.

  “Still out of it,” Justin replied and walked over to Joe’s truck parked a few feet away from his. “Emily, the nurse, says she’s gonna make it, but we’ve got to rush her to a hospital.”

  “Arctic Bay?”

  “No. Emily just drove from there and said they don’t have the necessary equipment. Carrie may have broken ribs and fractured legs. She’ll need surgeries. One of the defense contractor’s choppers is in Nanisivik, so I’m heading that way. Our Eurocopter is still in Arctic Bay, so that will be our last resort. But I don’t want to lose that much time.”

  “I wish I could tell you to use that Bell.” Joe jabbed his finger toward the airport terminal. A red helicopter stood outside the hangar. “But it got damaged in the fight. We couldn’t save it. And I couldn’t stop those jerks from taking off in the Herc.”

  “No worries. We’ve won the battle, and that’s the important thing.”

  All of a sudden, Ned broke into a low sob.

  “What’s the matter? Amaruq’s d . . .” Justin stopped in mid-sentence, as Joe rested his arm on Ned’s shoulder.

  Ned’s weeping grew louder. “I called him names . . . but he, he just saved us all. I’m . . . I’m so stupid.”

  “Don’t say that,” Justin said. “You were trying to look out for him.”

  “No, no, I . . . I screwed up.”

  “Amaruq lived a hunter’s life and died a warrior’s death,” Joe said. “Ned, we should be proud of him, instead of shedding tears. Amaruq, he would want us to do just that.”

  Justin nodded. “That’s right. Has anyone told Kiawak yet?”

  Joe and Ned shook their heads.

  “He’s not doing that well either,” Joe said.

  “What’s our death toll?” Justin asked.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t have all the numbers. Could be somewhere between twenty and fifty, dead and wounded. The Danes, on the other hand, were wiped out completely. We only saved, what?” Joe turned his head toward Ned, who was trying to appear composed. “Seven, eight guys?”

  “Seven,” Ned replied. “The eighth is a woman. Her name is Valgerda.”

  “See, he’s good with the gun and also has a perfect memory.” Joe tapped Ned on his shoulders.

  Ned replied with a shy, broken smile. “She surrendered when we took over the terminal. Her partner claims to be the
tactical commander of their operation. His name is Magnus. Magnus Torbjorn.”

  “Magnus,” Justin repeated.

  He had hardly finished breathing the man’s name when a great explosion flashed in the sky. Far away, at the point where some white clouds were floating over the horizon, the bright yellow glow of an airburst flamed for a few long moments.

  “What the hell was that?” Joe asked.

  “Isn’t that where the Herc was headed?” Ned said.

  “The Super Hercules? You think that son of a gun found his doom up there?” Joe rubbed his long beard thoughtfully.

  “Fire raining down from heaven?” Justin said. “A lightening rod up the Hercules’s aft?”

  They all laughed.

  As their chuckle dwindled, another loud rumble came from the sky, from the same direction of the explosion. This time it was constant and ever increasing.

  “Airplanes?” Ned wondered.

  Joe shook his head. “It sounds like choppers, two, maybe more.” He reached for his binoculars in the backseat of the truck. “Yeah,” he added a second later, “three choppers.”

  “Canadian Forces?” Justin asked.

  “Stars and Stripes.” Joe handed Justin the binoculars. “They look to me like the one Carrie was flying.”

  “Seahawks?” Ned shouted. “American fighter helos? What’s this turning into, the Third World War?”

  Justin gazed through the binoculars at the approaching Seahawks. Other men had spotted the helicopters, and they were gathering around Justin’s truck.

  “How do the Americans know where we are?” Joe asked, stepping out of his truck.

  “No idea.” Justin stepped out of the truck, still peering at the helicopters. “Maybe there was a GPS transmitter in Carrie’s chopper.”

  “Or maybe someone radioed them in,” one of the men suggested.

  “We’ve got to get ready,” Joe shouted, holding up his M-16 in his right hand. “Ned, set up positions—”

  “No!” A woman’s voice interrupted them.

  Justin turned around and saw Emily waving her arms in the air, striving to push her way through the group of men and reach Joe’s truck. “They’re not here to fight,” she shouted.

  “Oh, really? So what do they want?” Joe asked Emily.

  “It’s Richard,” Emily said to Justin. She got closer to him. “Colonel Richard Clark. You remember him. Commander of the Thule Air Base.”

  Justin nodded. “Did you call them?”

  “Yes. I asked . . . I begged him to help you, to send in troops, but he refused. I’m surprised they’re showing up here and now, but . . . hmmm, at least they can take Carrie and the other wounded to a hospital.”

  “Really? They come in peace?” Joe said. “Like the Danes?”

  “Joe, calm down,” Justin replied. “Emily has no reason to lie. She didn’t have to come here. We left her in Arctic Bay, and if she wanted to save herself, she could have asked the Americans to come and rescue her there.”

  “She’s seeking revenge for the time you kidnapped her,” Joe said. “That’s why she called Uncle Sam.”

  Emily frowned and shook her head. “Of course not. If I wanted revenge, I would have stayed in Arctic Bay. The helicopters would have dropped bombs over your heads as we flew over. I helped Justin and Kiawak and your other wounded friends. What a great way to seek revenge!”

  Joe swallowed and looked around. A few men were nodding in approval of Emily’s words. Some of them held up their gauze-wrapped arms.

  “Well, maybe they want revenge, this Richard guy,” Joe said. “I still say we need to set up positions.”

  Justin looked up at the helicopters. Their shape was now visible to the naked eye. Flying in a triangular formation, their rumble began to shake Justin’s eardrums.

  “How about this,” Justin said. “Joe, you set up a defense line, while I go and meet up with them.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Anna said, stepping up beside Justin.

  “Take Ned and a few other guys,” said Joe. “In case things get ugly.”

  “I’m staying here,” Emily said, moving to the driver’s seat of Justin’s truck. “Carrie will be in good hands.”

  Justin nodded. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  “Now, just to let you know, the commander, if he’s there with the copters, may be slightly pissed off.” Emily placed her hand on Justin’s right arm. “At first, the commander didn’t want to violate Canada’s territorial sovereignty. But he was more than willing to order a rescue mission when I called the base from Arctic Bay. As we were talking, I learned from him about the Danish airplane landing here, like I told you earlier. But what I didn’t tell you was that he ordered me to stay in the Bay. Obviously, I disobeyed that direct order. Besides,” Emily bit her lip before continuing, “in the heat of the moment, I may have called him a coward.”

  “What?” Anna blurted.

  “Yes, exactly that.” Justin pointed at Anna.

  “He wasn’t going to lift a finger, and he wasn’t coming to your rescue. I was trying to challenge him, in hopes he would change his mind.”

  “Well, your insult did work, since he sent three choppers here,” Justin said. “Late, of course, but better late than never.”

  “I wanted you to learn this from me, in case Richard’s in there, and comes charging at you about this.”

  “Trust me. He has many, many other reasons to be furious with me. Just keep an eye on Carrie, and I’ll take care of this.”

  Justin looked over across the road. The three Seahawks were touching down over the permafrost. A cloud of snow dust surrounded them, as their blades began to slow down. “Let’s go, guys.” He gestured toward the Seahawks and led a group of ten men.

  Anna followed one step behind him, her rifle ready to shoot at a moment’s notice.

  Chapter Thirty

  Nanisivik, Canada

  April 14, 12:03 p.m.

  Colonel Richard Clark was dressed in the same navy blue uniform as the first time Justin had met him, with a black felt overcoat that hung down to his knees. A deep frown was carved in his face.

  “Commander,” Justin said with a respectful nod.

  His team stood at about fifty feet away from the commander and his men, seven people in all, who were lined up in front of their helicopters. They were carrying assault rifles and looked more like a SWAT team than a rescue dispatch.

  “I owe you a big apology,” Justin said.

  The commander gave Justin a grin.

  “OK, two apologies. I took Emily with me, and I borrowed your chopper. But it was for a very noble reason.”

  “Go on, I’m listening.”

  “I have the evidence to convince you of the Danish attack. We’ve just survived a long and harsh battle. Many good men are dead or gravely wounded. We have captured a few of the Danes, who will testify to their evil plans, reasons, motives, and whatever you want to ask them.”

  “You don’t have to convince me of anything.” He gestured with his hand to his troops to relax their position. “I’m sure Sergeant Moore told you about the landing coordinates of the Super Hercules,” he said in a quiet voice, although a certain degree of anger was still evident in his words. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. In a way, you could say she did you all a big, big favor.”

  “She did, you’re right. In fact, I can truly say she saved our lives, a great number of our lives.”

  “I’m glad we agree on something. As soon as we intercepted the Hercules, we contacted the Canadian Forces to establish the identity and the objective of this plane. After confirmations that the plane was not Canadian, we demanded clarifications from Denmark. Their replies were vague, at best. They had scheduled a wargame for later in the week, but it was supposed to take place in international waters and airspace, not deep into Canadian territory. After we received this information, and as soon as the Canadian Forces authorized me to fly into the Canadian airspace and retrieve one of my own, I rushed in.”

&nbs
p; “Did you blast the Hercules to smithereens?” Anna asked.

  “No. The airplane exploded all of a sudden.”

  “We tried to stop it from taking off. I guess our firepower must have damaged its flying systems,” Justin said.

  The commander shrugged. “I’m up to my neck in a matter that doesn’t pertain to me. You and Canada can clean up your mess.”

  Justin nodded and exchanged a quick glance with Anna. “OK. The Seahawk was shot down and the pilot, Carrie, is unconscious, fighting for her life. I will kindly ask for your help to fly her and my other wounded men to a hospital. The closest one is in Iqaluit.”

  The commander took one step forward. “I guess this battle has taught you how to ask politely when you want something, huh? My clearance does not involve the transportation of Canadian army troops or irregular militia.”

  “I’m sure you have access to the right channels to ask for such an authorization. Many people are gravely wounded. They will die if not provided immediately with extensive medical attention.”

  The commander held Justin’s pleading gaze for a brief moment. “All right. I’ll get the necessary authorization, and we’ll take your people on board. The only restriction will be the one imposed by the choppers’ capacity.”

  “Thank you. I’m very much obliged.”

  He dismissed Justin’s gratitude with a wave of his hand. “I don’t see Emily among your people.” His tone of voice expressed clear disappointment.

  “Hmm, that . . . yes . . . about Emily.” Justin chewed the words in his mouth.

  “Is she dead?” he asked without any emotion. “You can tell me the truth.”

  “No, she’s not dead.”

  “So, where is she? Didn’t she recognize the Seahawks?”

  “I was . . . I understand you and Emily exchanged some . . . some harsh words.”

  The commander moved closer to Justin. “Harsh words is a euphemism.” He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “Sergeant Moore disobeyed a clear and direct order. She was willing to put my own life and the life of my men in great danger and force us into a war we have no part in. Now, where is she hiding?” He looked over Justin’s shoulder toward a cluster of trucks further down the road.