by J. L. Bourne
As I approached, I recognized the outline and clothing. It was Mars, stumbling, cussing, and waving an empty Stinger canister around like a battle-axe.
“You okay, Mars?!” I yelled down at him.
He turned to face me. Although everything was green through the NVD, his face was covered in something darker.
Blood.
I jumped off the horse and ran over to him, checking his limbs first. Aircraft guns had a way of knocking off body parts. With all his limbs intact, I began to examine his head. I don’t know how anyone could be so lucky, but it appears that one of the aircraft’s rounds had nicked him there.
“You are one lucky bastard. You got hit in the head with a . . .” I said just before Mars hit the ground, unconscious. I quickly removed the med kit from my pack and began applying first aid. Scalp cuts always bled pretty badly and his was no different. I broke out a pack of clotting agent and applied it to Mars’s head with some pressure, wrapping it over with a bandage. I elevated his torso until the rest of the team began to trickle in from the hills.
“What happened to him?” Savannah asked.
“He got hit with one of those rounds. Just grazed. He’ll be okay as long as the concussion isn’t too bad,” I said.
“Can we move him?” she asked.
“I don’t think we have a choice, unless you guys brought more ammo and Stingers.”
After the bleeding stopped, we strapped Mars onto his horse and tied it off to another, making way back to the camp.
“Was whatever that was in the truck worth it?” I asked Savannah.
“Yeah, you could say that.”
—————
0400
We got Mars back to camp about an hour ago. The doctor in the group informed Savannah that it was a concussion, and too early to tell how bad it might be. Mars would be on light duty for at least a week, and knowing what kind of guy he is, I doubted he’d be very happy to hear that. He’s passed out on some painkillers, but I’d be feeling pretty shitty too if I’d just got shot by a burst from a jet fighter gun and lived to tell about it.
The sun is coming up soon. I’ve set up a cold camp away from the fire circle. After watching that Flanker go to work, I don’t want to sleep anywhere near a heat or light signature. When I wake up, I’m going to see about getting some intel, perhaps some maps of the best routes into Bentonville.
After operating with these guys, I will say one thing: they’re not afraid to get it on.
BLUE YONDER
I rode with Savannah this afternoon. She woke me up with a kick to my sleeping bag. I nearly drew down on her until I realized with a freezing start where I was. Frozen pellets of ice covered my bag and peppered my hair. After shaking those off, I slowly crawled out of my cocoon, wincing with the aches and pains of running, gunning, and sleeping on the ground for extended periods.
Savannah saw my face and said, “Getting old sucks, huh?”
“It’s not the years, it’s the mileage,” I said, quoting one of the classics. After shaking off my bag and stuffing it damp back inside my pack, Savannah shoved a thermos into my face.
“Drink up. Instant coffee. We don’t have sugar.”
I twisted the lid open on the thermos and sipped, enjoying the heat. The coffee, not so much. I watched the steam rise from the thermos, swirling into the cold air.
Savannah said nothing for a few minutes. She seemed to be fixated on something in the distance, something I could not see or hear.
“We better get moving. Good cloud cover,” she said.
“Going where?”
“Before the mission, Mars said that you might want your hang glider back,” she said.
“You mean the ultralight.”
“Whatever. Kit up, get your horse. We ride in five.”
I kept the thermos, grabbed my kit, and headed for the fire circle to warm up a minute or two before heading out into the snowstorm that was maturing overhead. The large flakes fell, covering the trails and other areas, leaving the ground under the large cliff overhang clear of snow.
The fire circle raged, blasting heat like a furnace in all directions, melting any snow that fell within five feet of its perimeter. I soaked in the warmth and checked my watch. It was just after 1300, and the sun that was concealed behind the snow clouds had only about three hours before it went away. I was about to take my last sip of bad coffee and get on my horse when I heard the children begin to sing. I remembered some of them from when I first arrived at the NAI camp.
It was soft at first, but they soon began to gather around the fire circle and sing Christmas songs.
They had a pretty good “Jingle Bells” going before they forgot the words and went on to “Rudolph” and beyond. I smiled for the first time in a long while and hoped that these children would one day get the country that I and others enjoyed at their age.
I turned to see who was tapping my shoulder and was met with Savannah’s impatient glare. She nodded in the direction of Molly, who was already saddled up and ready.
“Thanks,” I told her, before jumping on the horse and following her down the trail.
“One more day,” she said, pacing beside me as we journeyed farther down the trail.
“Until?”
She pushed her horse ahead. “Until you leave.”
“That’s right,” I said.
We rode, neither speaking to the other until we reached a waterfall and she commanded her horse up the steep trail obscured by leaves, branches, and snow. I pushed Molly to follow and she obeyed, bringing me swiftly up the hill and beside another cliff face. We passed some cow ponds and meadows and reached a large fence that blocked off the path of a power transmission line.
Savannah dismounted and approached the fence with slow caution. Even though it was still snowing pretty heavily, I could see a hundred yards in both directions up and down the transmission line clearing. I noticed burn marks on the power transformers that hung high on two of the nearby poles.
After cutting through the fence with her master key (bolt cutters), we crossed into the woods and eventually reached an NAI cache hidden under some radar netting.
“This is where we kept the stuff we salvaged from the university prison. We got it just before the feds sent reinforcements to the area.”
Underneath a brown tarp, I recognized the wheels of my flying machine. I disconnected the bungee and pulled off the tarp. The machine looked to be repaired with fiberglass wrap holding the frame together. Since the frame was the battery, I could see where the NAI engineers connected severed circuits from where the frame snapped upon impact. My dried blood remained splattered on the wing, but some decent patch jobs covered up most of the bullet holes and small tears from the crash and after.
I checked the battery sequence and noted it at fifty percent charge. Opening the fuel reservoir, I shined my light inside seeing about a quarter tank of fuel remaining.
“Does it still fly?” I asked Savannah.
“Yeah, our engineers tested it. They flew it here, but it won’t hold the same charge it used to. Something about the battery cells being damaged.”
I began to calculate all options. Did I take the chance on riding Molly twenty miles north through countless checkpoints and hope that luck remained on my side?
Or should I attempt to take this old dragonfly under the cover of darkness and hope it didn’t crash or fall apart at a thousand-foot altitude?
If hungry raiders didn’t kill my horse for food and murder me, whatever was left of the government would shoot on sight. There was also that foreign troop and air support problem.
We spent some time organizing the cache and gassing up the ultralight. Savannah lashed some of the items from the cache onto her horse and I did the same.
“Can you get her back for me?” I asked, handing Savannah Molly’s reins.
“Yeah, I figured that’s what you’d want. The weather is pretty bad—might want to wait until it clears up. I’ll head back at nightfall.”
“You’ll need to fly with this on, you know, for your own protection.”
I’ll be damned. The woman was no stick in the mud; she actually possessed a sense of humor. We both laughed and she wished me good luck on the flight back, giving me tips on where best to land near the camp.
I shook her hand, enjoying the warmth of it, and told her that I’d probably beat her back. We shared a silent gaze before she released my hand and spoke.
“Don’t count on it.”
—————
After Savannah left, I pulled the ultralight out from under the camo net and out to the transmission line clearing. Snow and ice covered the ground on my take-off strip, and the left main gear tire was a little low, but not enough to cause any significant problems. I placed the tarp back over the plane and went back to the netting to wait on the visibility to get better. I then stoked the small stealth fire I’d made, adding more dead twigs. The warmth was welcome as the temperature plummeted to about twenty degrees, according to the solar powered smart watch I wore on the outside of my jacket.
I monitored the air pressure every so often, looking for indicators of weather change. I nodded off and woke up after midnight. The small fire had gone out and I was shivering, even through all the layers I wore to fight off the Arkansas winter chill.
I gathered my belongings and made way to the power line airport. I pulled the tarp from the machine and stowed it under the weight of a large rock behind a tree. The ground had a few inches of frozen ice and snow on top, but it shouldn’t have made a difference to the large balloon tires on the ultralight. They were designed for landing and taking off on the sand dunes of Syria, after all.
After folding out the wings and checking all the repair sections via flashlight, I put on my helmet and clicked my NVD over my eye. Energizing the system, the glass instruments came to life. Sensing the darkness, they auto-adjusted brightness so that they could be read clearly via the optic I was wearing. The aircraft was configured, so I hit the electric starter on the motor. After a few attempts, the engine spun to life, puffing out black smoke before the auto choke adjusted the mixture and the engine began to rapidly build RPMs. Even at idle, the carbon-fiber propeller began to nudge the aircraft forward.
I stowed my pack on the airframe and got in the pilot’s seat. Harrowing memories of nearly freezing to death while flying this thing over Fayetteville last year returned as soon as I began to buckle my harness.
I hit the throttles, putting them halfway from firewall, and the aircraft began to roll faster. Gaining speed down the transmission line–clearing hill, I increased the throttles even more until I could feel the mains taking long skips on the snow-covered ground. At a good rotate speed, I pulled the light aircraft up and banked right into the darkness, just missing the overhead lines—a good thing to remember.
I retraced my path back to the cliffs using my NVD to pick out the light from the fire. Before I got too close, I kicked the propulsion over to electric to both monitor how much the damaged batteries could take, and also to make a quiet landing so as to not attract any undesirables to the cliff operating base.
I picked a hillside with a gentle grade and sat the aircraft down in much the way I took off, gently skipping until my speed was slow enough to let gravity pull me down and let the brakes do the rest. I skidded to a stop and secured the power to the avionics. Just before my instruments went dark, I saw the frame battery level holding at forty-five percent. Not too shabby.
After folding the wings back, I slowly pulled the aircraft to the tree line and concealed it enough to make it until tomorrow. Designed for stealth, it would be difficult to pick it out on radar or IR camera. The repairs made to the wing material and battery were probably not IR tested, but those only covered about ten percent of the aircraft.
I took my kit and made way in the direction of the fire circle that must have been about a half mile away from what I saw in the air. As I approached, the hair on the back of my neck began to stand up. Getting closer, I could see not just one fire but several. The fire circle that once stood as the heartbeat to the camp lay strewn in ruins.
I dared not venture closer; I pulled back to observe.
It didn’t take long. I could hear gunshots and other sounds of skirmish being muffled by the snow and dense trees surrounding the camp. I saw movement through the trees pushing me to close the distance. Visibility wasn’t great, but I managed to get near enough to see a line of three soldiers taking cover behind a fallen tree. They didn’t lay down suppressive fire, only taking shots after carefully aiming at a target I could not see. I didn’t bother unfolding my sub gun stock as I crept closer.
One of the soldiers said something. I recognized that it was Chinese, but that’s about it; it wasn’t my language.
At about fifteen yards, I leveled my suppressed gun on the most active rifleman and put his lights out. The other two reacted with expected panic; I took their lives before they could swing their AK-47s around to chop me in half.
I liberated the best AK of the three as well as all the magazines the soldiers had. My suppressed 9mm sub gun had its place, but that 7.62x39 AK punch was a league of its own. I flashed my IR light in the same pattern I saw Mars flash his, waiting a few moments before my challenge signal was returned with a valid reply. After a few tense minutes, Savannah appeared from the darkness covered in blood.
Through her gasps, she began to recount what had happened at the camp.
Upon her return on horseback, the whole camp was under siege by Chinese shock troops. A vicious fight ensued between the NAI and the Chinese, with both sides taking heavy losses. Savannah stayed back and set up a sniper’s hide, picking off as many soldiers as she could. With everyone killed or captured, she waited until the Chinese troops departed the camp before returning. As she looked for survivors, three Chinese soldiers—the ones I took out—appeared and began shooting at her. Her NVD enabled her to sink back into the edge of camp without being killed. She was engaging those troops when I outflanked them.
“Mars?” I asked.
“I don’t know . . . I doubt he made it,” she responded sadly.
We searched the entire camp for survivors. The only signs that anyone might have made it were the groups of fresh boot tracks leading down the hill away from the camp. After covering the dead and scavenging for supplies, we fell back to the ultralight with our horses. Savannah pointed out key areas on my map where the NAI kept supplies. Any camp survivors would probably rendezvous at one of the caches. She was the only NAI soldier that knew the locations of all the weapons and supply caches the NAI had in the area. I picked a rally point ten miles to the north of our position. We only had two hours of daylight left. I could make it well before sunup in the ultralight but she wouldn’t, not in this weather and with the potential for troops to be lurking around every boulder and tree.
The ultralight would be too heavy to pull very far, and too loud to fly. It was a good thing we had two horsepower with us. We dragged the aircraft deeper into the woods and covered it with more foliage. It wouldn’t be safe to remain this close to the now defunct camp, so we mounted up and headed into the valley.
As the horses took us away from the camp, I looked behind, observing the smoke rising up through my NVD and the tracks we were making behind us.
“We’ll lead them right to us,” I said, gesturing at the horse tracks behind us.
Savannah said nothing—she just pulled the reins and led her horse to the left to the tree line where the snow wasn’t as heavy. I followed. After trailing her course, I couldn’t really make out the tracks behind us very well and the snow was still falling.
I followed her for a mile before she led her horse out of the clearing and deeper into the woods. She stopped the horse near a creek and got off. She pulled some branches off a small fire pit and be
gan to break them up and stack them inside. Soon a small fire was crackling and popping, warming up the area.
I pulled out my mess kit and scooped a pan of water from the near freezing creek and placed it on the rocks near the small fire. As it began to boil, I poured two pouches of instant coffee inside and sloshed it around, offering Savannah a cup. She didn’t answer.
I unrolled my sleeping bag and set up my bed before heading out into the woods to gather firewood. You always need three times as much as you think. After provisioning up for the rest of the fleeting morning, I crawled inside my pack with my boots still on. Not very comfortable.
Right now, Savannah is still up and I can see the first subtle signs of morning to the east. I hope this fire is small enough not to be noticed from above, but something told me Savannah wasn’t worried. She has a long rectangular container strapped to her horse, just like Mars.
—————
We’ve discovered more data using the latest digital forensic techniques on the archives we’ve recovered. By taking quarter angstrom imagery of recovered HDD storage media, we are able to feed the damaged drives into quantum state analyzers, reconstructing the data by brute force.
The first documented foreign attack on United States soil occurred at the cliff overhang NAI camp on the early morning of December 20, 2023. Records indicate that the provisional government located the camp by lacing intercepted supplies with micro RFID tags. The spaced-based systems active at that time were able to track the stolen supplies in real time, enabling the geolocation of the NAI cell and subsequent attack. This attack acted as a jumpstart to a larger resistance movement based on the post-attack propaganda we’ve analyzed. We’ve only extracted about seven percent of possible data from the hardware we recovered at the sites of interest.
Very respectfully, —————————————
Lead Tech, Big Iron
—————
20 Dec
Noon