by John Holmes
“I want to surrender. I have heard of the power of your leader, and seen it with my own eyes, and I want to learn from him.”
“Bullshit, Infidel. How can we trust you?” He glanced nervously upward, looking for American drones.
“I guess you just have to. We’re at a bit of a sta-“ A fourth man had circled around the rock outcropping and snuck up behind Bognaski, and he hit him in the back of the head with the wooden stock of his Kalashnikov, slow enough to push its’ way through his shield. He fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes, and didn’t feel the sandaled feet that started kicking him.
Chapter 26 Mage HQ, Medical Wing
“So, the entity inhabiting you, giving you your life force, is a Greek Dryad named Erato.” Juan Cervantes sat typing notes into his laptop. Jamie York was in the middle of getting a full medical workup from Chief Houchins.
“That’s what she said. What she says. I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Shes like a voice in my head, whispering things to me. Am I going crazy?”
“No, and I’m glad it’s her whispering things in YOUR head, instead of you whispering things in HER head. Your personality, your identity, came out on top. It very well could have been the other way around.”
A relieved look came over York’s face, then she still, as if listening. Then she sat bolt upright. “Bognaski has been captured!” she said. “Or he will be captured. It’s kinda hard to understand what, exactly she means.”
Houchins stopped her exam, and Cervantes leaned forward eagerly. “Erato was a prophetess, able to make predictions. Of course, getting predictions from a minor Greek goddess can be confusing. Can you ask her what she means?”
York looked confused again, and answered “No, I can’t ask anything It’s just a voice in my head. Talking randomly sometimes.”
Houchins asked her “Can you deal with it, Jamie?”
She shook her head yes. “It’s just like when I was surfing. You get tossed around by a big wave, and you don’t know which way is up, so you just wait it out until it gets clear and you make your way to the surface. This thing in my head throws a lot of interference; I just have to wait it out.”
The Chief Medical Officer took her stethoscope off her neck and said “As far as I’m concerned, she’s good to go. Though I wish we had a month for her to get used to being two people. Now, I have to get some sleep or I’m going to drop dead myself.” Houchins shuffled out of the room, and Cervantes watched her go.
“That is a brave woman. She took a big risk, working on you all through the night last night, exhausting her magic. You need to make it worthwhile.”
“What do you mean, a risk? How? Did she risk getting possessed herself?” She paused for a moment, a blank look on her face, then whispered to herself, “Oh my God. She has cancer?”
“Yes. Stage four lymphatic cancer. The docs gave her a few months to live ten years ago. She has fought and fought, and I’m afraid last night might have been a bit much for her. Still, it was her choice.”
“But I don’t understand. Why am I that important?”
Cervantes looked at her for a moment, then said “You know Sergeant Smith has feelings for you, correct? He is, um, how do you say it in English, crushing on you?”
York blushed very deeply. “Uh, yeah. I think he’s a pretty good kid but .. he’s enlisted, and I’m a Warrant Officer, and he’s so, well, young!”
Cervantes laughed. “He’s the same age as you, he just took a different path in life so far. Regardless, we need him right now. Call it selfish, or mission critical, but he is our only connection to this ‘Shaman’ in the Gorengal Valley. Colonel Scarletti may have suppressed it, but it’s still there, and in the future, it may become absolutely critical. As such, we can’t have him worrying about YOU. He needs to know that you’re OK. Besides” he said “I am adverse to letting someone so pretty and young die. If I were a hundred years younger myself, Sergeant Smith may have had some competition!”
She blushed again, but laughed. He continued “Another reason is that you are one of the best trauma Mages we have right now. Everyone else is in the field, and I have a feeling that Strike Team Seven is going to need some expert medical care, very soon, f I know anything about that crazy pack of fools operate.”
“So I’m joining them?”
“In a while, yes. There is no one strong enough to teleport you back to Durkistan right now, since the Colonel is not here. You will be picking up a C-17 flight out of Stewart enroute to Germany, Kuwait, then Durkistan. How you get into the valley is up to Colonel Scarletti. Pack accordingly.”
He got up, said goodbye, and left her sitting on the exam table with her own thoughts. As soon as he left, the conversations in her head resumed again.
“I will help you all I can, but I do not know how long I can stay in this body. It has been thousands of years, and my spirit is now weak.”
“I understand. What happens when you go?”
“You may die. I do not know.”
A chill ran down her spine, and her head felt light. She asked the Dryad if she would know beforehand what would happen.
“You will feel me fade and weaken, and then you must take control of yourself again. It may take years, or moments. I do not know, child. An eldest dragon comes from the West. Go outside to meet him.”
“This talking to another person in my head is some spooky shit” thought York. She quickly pulled her boots on and rushed through the corridors until she arrived at the doors to outside. She stepped out, put her cover on her head, and looked westward, where the rising sun was driving the shadows away. In the distance, growing larger, was a shimmering figure of rose colored steel, reflecting the rising sun’s rays. Next to it, and slightly behind, she could make out the figures of two F- 22 Raptors following, escorting the dragon out of the country. They peeled off as he settled down on the wall of the Fort.
A sergeant she recognized as being from the supply section opened the back of a LMTV, and a dozen sheep spilled out onto the ground and started running around the compound. Aed quickly snatched them up in his huge mouth, swallowing them whole. When the last one was gone, he started coughing, and a giant hairball covered in frost shot from his mouth and landed full on the sergeant.
“Next time, sheer the sheep before you give them to me” rumbled the dragon. York laughed out loud, and Aed turned his head towards her. It was as if a Minivan swung through the air. York shivered as is frosty breath settled over her. He stared at her long and hard, then snorted and flew away.
She almost jumped when Cervantes spoke from behind her. “Good thing you’re not a virgin, or her might have chomped you up. He’s got a thing for blonde virgins. Reminds him of his time living with the Vikings.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Aed settled back down on another part of the wall, after rising several thousand feet and diving back down. The escorting fighters, which had come back around the second he lifted into the air, screamed off in frustration. The dragon laughed, a low deep rumble.
“They annoy me, so I fly slower than their stall speed. Soon, though I shall have to go. Erato, daughter of Poseidon, it has been long since we have met.”
York felt the words coming out of her mouth, but she had no control over them.
“Hail, Aed. It has been almost three thousand years. You look well.”
The dragon rumbled a low laugh, and hissed out a stream of frost. “And the body you are in looks scrumptious.” He made a mock snapping motion with his jaws.
“Times have changed, apparently. You can’t just eat whomever you want anymore. I shall see you again on the far side of the world, Aed.”
“Until then, daughter of Poseidon.” He swept his wings downward and launched himself into the air, climbing quickly. The fighter jets swept downward to accompany him again, and he dove quickly to gain airspeed, then started weaving through the hills on the other side of the river, forcing them to gain altitude to keep him in sight. His amused l
augher faded out as he sped eastward.
Chapter 27 Strike Team Seven high up on Taran – Gar mountain, Durkistan.
Doc Hamilton handed Smith some local clothes and told him to put them on over his uniform. They were old and smelled like goat, making Smith wrinkle his nose as he stepped into them. There was a bullet hole directly over the heart, and a small blood stain.
“What are these for?”
“We have to patrol to keep the bad guys off of us, and gather intel. This might give us a second or two of confusion if we bump into one of their patrols. Yesterday, Ahmed managed to talk his way out of an encounter with one of their patrols.”
Smith thought about it for a second. ”I guess that makes sense, when you can’t use magic to disguise yourself. Don’t you worry about getting shot as a spy, though? Being out of uniform is against the Geneva convention.”
A bitter laugh came from the other side of the cave, where Specialist O’Neil was cleaning her AK. “Like these barbarians have ever heard of the Geneva Convention, much less signed it. Kid, they will cut your head off just for being American. You were here before; I’m surprised you’re so naïve.”
The comment stung a little. The young sergeant had been hoping to make an impression on the blue eyed redhead. “Yeah, well, I was riding convoys, so I didn’t get much of a chance to meet the people here. The one time I got up close and personal, I took a bullet to the head.”
She laughed again. “And that didn’t convince you? Idiot!” she said, shaking her head.
Sergeant First Class Agostine interrupted her. “Don’t be so hard on the kid, Brit. He’s seen stuff that will make you shit your underwear.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and said “Not wearing any!”, but then she said to Smith “Sorry, just busting your balls.”
“ANYWAY” said Agostine “Smith, I need you to tune up our weapons. We haven’t been able to since all this shit started, and I’m pretty sure things are running low.”
“Check, Sergeant, can do. What do you need first?” Ahmed answered by coming over with two rifles, his usual Dragunov and a larger Barrett .50 caliber.
“This one” he said, gesturing to the Dragunov, “just needs some more accuracy.”
“Easy enough” said Smith, leaning over the rifle and closing his eyes. As he started murmuring the spell, he could feel the rifle inside his mind, feel the rightness of it. He dove into it, embracing it in his imagination, seeking out the slight imperfections that effected accuracy. A slight bend in the barrel, imperceptible except by a laser in a factory, was child’s play for him to fix. Likewise, a small pit in the chrome lining was quickly fixed, rolling atoms from the surrounding metal to fill it. He moved on to the magazine, feeling his way through each round, making sure the bullets were seated in the brass cartridges properly, and that the powder was uniformly distributed.
With a small smile, he handed the weapon back to Ahmed. “What do you need with the Barrett?” His smile vanished, though, when he remembered what it had felt like to be hit with the heavy round during the ambush in the Gorengal.
“You need to make this a Shaman killer. I want to be able to” Ahmed paused, searching for the right word “to penetrate the protective spells surrounding our target in the valley.”
Brit spoke up with a leer. “Why don’t you just buy him dinner? You’ll have a better chance of penetrating, trust me!” Ahmed ignored her and handed the massive weapon to Smith.
“I … I think I can. Give me a few minutes.” He sat down on the floor, thinking about how to do this, then handed the rifle back to Ahmed. “Let me see the magazine.”
The Pashtun tribesman handed him a box the size of a small paperback. Inside were a stack of ten rounds. He pushed each one forward out of the magazine, until he held them all in a pile on his lap. Then he pulled out a small tablet, powered it up, and started scrolling through options.
“Find what you are looking for?” asked Ahmed.
“Give me a second. Yep, here it is. Please stand back a bit, I need some breathing room.” He closed his eyes again and placed each round in a row on the rock floor in front of him, chanting slowly. In his minds eye, he picked up the first round and did the same he did for the smaller Dragunov rounds, checking for imperfections. Then he looked at the bullet itself. He thought about exchanging the soft lead core for uranium for better penetration, but then realized that it would throw off the ballistics of the round. However, he could do something about punching through a spell. He felt the power flow through him into the bullet, changing some of the atoms in the copper jacket to silver, mixing them together. Not enough to change the weight but a micro thin coating on the outside. The round would more easily slip through any spells that were woven around the Shaman, since the silver would help negate any magic. Then he changed a spell of finding on the bullet, using the magic signature of the Shaman.
“Not even Colonel Scarletti could do that one” he mused to himself. Smith was the only one who had dealt with the Shaman before. He turned to the next round and worked the same magic. As he chanted, he felt himself getting more and more tired, the energy draining out of him. “Just one more” he thought, and picked up the sixth round in his mind. His concentration was broken for a second, a random thought popping into his head.
A loud BANG sounded just in front of him, and the round he was working on exploded in his face. The brass cartridge, not having a rifle chamber around it to lend support, shattered, shooting across the room, and the heavy bullet went whipping in the opposite direction, burying itself in the wall a half an inch from Brit, showering her with rock fragments. The powder flashed up into Smith’s face, and he felt a thousand little pinpricks on his skin. The rest to the team hit the floor as the shell casing richocetted around the cave, coming to a stop on the floor.
“Isus Hrist!” shouted Ziv, who had just walked into the cave from outside. He rushed over to Smith, who was holding his face. The scared faced Serb pulled hard at the Mage’s hands prying them away from his eyes to see how badly he had been burned. Doc knelt by Brit, who was trying to stop blood from pouring out of a deep laceration in her scalp.
Ziv poured water over Smith’s face, and he spluttered, then used his shirt sleeve to wipe it away. “It’s OK, I’m OK, I can see!” The Serb stepped back and looked at Smith’s face Angry red powder burns freckled his cheek where he had turned away at the last instant.
“YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!” shouted Brit, and she tore herself away from where Doc was trying to examine her wound. She launched herself at the surprised Smith, punching him as hard as she could across the jaw. He saw stars and fell to the floor. Brit kicked him hard in the ribs, screaming at him. “That could have been my fucking HEAD!”
At a word from Agostine, Ziv, who had stood back with an amused smile on his cruel face, grabbed Brit and pulled her bodily off of Smith, who was weakly trying to defend himself. She spit on him and then calmly walked back to Doc. Smith sat up and tried to make his head stop spinning.
“I’m sorry. I got tired, mistakes happen.”
Agostine, who hadn’t moved because his artificial leg was sitting, unstrapped, next to him, got up and hopped over to Smith. “She’s right. You put everyone in here at risk. F you couldn’t handle that level of spellcasting, or if there was even a risk of it, you should have had everyone clear out. If you had injured or killed any one of us, this whole mission could have been scrubbed.” His blue eyes held steady on Smith, until the younger NCO nodded. Agostine went on “Casualties in battle we can risk. Casualties from pride before a battle, well, I’ll kill you myself next time it happens. Do we understand each other?”
Smith swallowed. “Uh, yes, Sergeant. I just wanted to be as helpful as possible.”
“We appreciate that. Just don’t bite off more than you can chew.” Smith looked over at Brit, who was complaining as Doc stitched her cut closed. She saw him looking and gave him the finger. His heart fell, and he sat back down on the floor. He hadn’t been with the team half an hour
, and already they hated him.
Chapter 28. Khandali Airfield, Durkistan
“No way” Colonel Scarletti sat in a chair in the JSOC briefing room. “I’m not putting her on an aircraft. Are you out of your mind? You just lost an entire C-130, with crew.”
The Air Operations Officer, standing in front of the projector, argued back. “Sir, we’ve mapped out all the dead zones. A CH-47 can fly the backside of Taran – Gar and put her down in this LZ, here.” He used a laser pointer to highlight an open area in a satellite photo. “Then Strike Team Seven can link up with her and they can Charlie Mike. It’s only about two kilometers from their hide spot.”
“Two kilometers straight line, and how many meters in elevation distance?” grumbled Scarletti.
Chief York spoke up from the back of the room. “Sir, if I may?” Scarletti turned in his seat to face her and nodded.
“Sir, I don’t think there will be a problem. At least, Erato says she sees no danger to me in the foreseeable future.”
Scarletti scowled. He had dealt with Possession before, and with Prophets. Sometimes what they said wasn’t always what they meant. On top of that, he was tired. He had spent the last twenty four hours teleporting a full company of M1A2 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to within 5 kilometers of the head of the Gorengal valley, and building up a concealment spell over them. The crews would be brought in by helicopter as soon as events provided an opening for an armored attack down the length of the valley. Operation FALCO had turned from a reconnaissance mission to a full blown attack, and the Mage Corps staff had busy coordinating with JSOC and the Regular Army units in country.
The G-3 spoke up “Please tell me again why we are sending Chief York up there?”
Scarletti rubbed his hand over his face feeling the stubble. “Because I feel like we should be. Strike Team Seven has Smith with them, but no mage medical support. I know Doc Hamilton is good, but we always provide support when the shit is going to hit the fan. She’s the only one we have that’s not tied down, and honestly, I don’t have the time or the desire to bring another Healer up to speed. That, and the Pentagon has classified this entire operation. Having said that, let’s review the entire Op again.”