by Jessy Cruise
Skip had watched the entire episode down below from his perch 2000 feet above the action. Though the players in the drama were no more than tiny dots moving on a muddy backdrop, so small that sex could not even be determined, and though he had had no radio communication with his second platoon since his last order for them to pull back, he knew, he simply knew that Christine was the one helping the injured party.
When he saw ten men from the group that had taken the trenches on the right suddenly peel off and head south around the western hill, he also knew what their intention was. Though they had hesitated too long to catch the main group of second platoon, they would easily be able to sweep around and place themselves directly in Christine's path.
"This is not good," Skip said, his mind trying to think of a solution.
"Skip," said Jack, who had also watched the entire thing, and who also knew that it was his sister down there. "What do we do? They're gonna get Christine! They're gonna cut them off!"
Skip didn't answer. He keyed up his radio, which was still set to the VHF frequency. " Christine!" he barked into it. "Are you there? Christine, they're trying to cut around and get in front of you! Move faster!"
Christine's voice answered a moment later. It was very out of breath. "We're going as fast as we can," she said. "Rhonda's wounded bad. I need to get her to Paul."
" Christine, drag her faster!" Skip commanded. "You have to. They're going to cut you off!"
Christine didn't answer again, perhaps not wanting to expend the energy to do so. What she did manage to do however, was pick up her pace a bit. Skip saw that the tiny dots that were the woman he loved and one of her soldiers started going just a little faster. It was plain to see, by comparing their pace with the other tiny dots that were the militia group, that it still wouldn't be fast enough.
"Skip, what do we do?" Jack asked. "They'll kill her! Or worse, they'll rape her! Can you land and pick them up?"
"We can't land," Skip said, shaking his head. "There's too much mud, too many trees, too many hills. No clearance for the blades and no ground firm enough to take our weight. They're gonna have to get out on foot."
"We have to do something," Jack pleaded. "We can't just let them get taken!"
Skip took a deep breath and looked at his young friend and protégé, knowing he was right. He could not, would not sit up here in watch while they were captured. "Load up the gun," he told him. "We're going down."
Jack looked back at him seriously. He had been around long enough to know that venturing too close to armed troops during the daylight hours was a very bad idea - one of the worst. Nevertheless, he nodded and reached into the storage compartment for a magazine of ammunition. "Let's do it," he said.
"What are we doing?" Sherrie, who was a reluctant passenger in the vehicle, wanted to know. Her voice conveyed the message that she hadn't liked the tone of the conversation a bit.
" Christine is trying to get a wounded person out of the area," Skip told her. "She's about to be cut off by enemy forces and captured unless we can do something about it."
"And what are we going to do?" she wanted to know.
"We're going to dive down on them and put them in the dirt," Skip said. He looked back at her. "It's dangerous. There's a good chance they'll shoot us, maybe even shoot us down. If you have any objections to this, let's hear them. I'll take them under consideration." This was his roundabout way of saying that he would not risk Sherrie's life to save his wife's and another's without her permission.
Sherrie understood this. She didn't hesitate for a second. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked.
"Just hold on tight to something," he told her. "We're gonna be doing some pretty violent maneuvering."
She barked a short, nervous laugh. "Consider me hung," she said, grasping the hooks to which her bungee cords were attached.
Skip gave her a smile and then looked back over to Jack, who had just slammed his magazine into the weapon and loosened up the clamps so that it could be easily turned and twisted. "We ready?" he asked.
Jack twisted and turned the weapon back and forth a few times, getting the feel of it, making sure it was just right. He nodded in satisfaction. After two weeks of night runs at the controls of the mounted M-16, it felt as familiar in his hands as the PlayStation controller that he'd once obsessively used back in Berkeley before the comet. "Ready to rock," he said, jacking the first round into the chamber.
"Let's do it then," Skip said, taking another look down at the advancing militia troops. They were approaching the halfway point around the first hill in their path, moving at a run. "You hangin on, Sherrie?"
"As tight as I can," she confirmed.
"Hang even tighter," he told her. "In a second it's gonna feel like gravity just up and disappeared on you."
Before she really had a chance to ponder those words, Skip began the attack maneuver. He spun around to the south, towards the canyon and put on some forward speed. Once they were moving at about fifty knots he basically let them fall out of the sky.
"Oh my Goddddd!" Sherrie screamed in terror as she felt herself go virtually weightless. Her stomach was suddenly in her throat. It felt a little like an amusement park ride that she had once been on, one in which the passengers were dropped from several hundred feet in the air before their fall was arrested by a curved track at the bottom. It felt like that in an abstract way, but it also felt a hundred times worse. There was no sense of control to this particular ride, no sense that it would be over in a second or to, no sense of security from having a ridiculously large, padded harness over her shoulders. This was a violent freefall in an aircraft with no doors on it, a fall that would only end amid a group of armed men who would be shooting at them. She burped a little and suddenly vomit was spraying from her mouth, splattering over her headset microphone.
Even Jack, as accustomed and enthusiastic a passenger as he usually was, was scared shitless by the sudden dive. It felt for all the world like they were in a death spiral, that they were a hair's breadth away from smashing to the ground in a violent explosion. He moaned a little, his hands gripping the weapon tightly, his eyes trying to keep track of his targets through the bouncing windshield.
Skip let them fall until they were less than 600 feet above the ground and then he pulled up sharply, slamming everyone violently back down at nearly 3Gs. The nose came up, the tail went down, and the engine screamed in mechanical protest as the design limitations of the small helicopter were pushed to the very limits and beyond. The moment the chopper was in level flight once again he banked sharply to the right and put on the speed, accelerating up to the maximum that the aircraft was capable of. The hill that the targets were moving around was now directly in front of them, its summit just below them by no more than a hundred feet.
"Make this count, Jase," Skip said as he cut around the side of the hill, still accelerating. "Put those fuckers on the ground."
"Just get me in range," Jack answered.
They passed almost directly over the top of Christine and Rhonda, close enough to see them staring upward at them in surprise, and then Skip banked sharply again, spinning them around the hill and towards their quarry. He sharpened the bank a little, causing Sherrie to upchuck the rest of her breakfast behind them, and then suddenly the figures of ten men spun into view from the right.
"There they are!" Skip yelled, cutting back to the left and straightening out. "Mow 'em down!"
Jack began to fire, watching through the windshield instead of the FLIR screen as the tracers shot out. They were moving nearly a hundred nautical miles per hour and the window of opportunity that he had was only a second or two, but it was enough. He adjusted the stream and raked his fire over them, knocking two of the startled militiamen down before the rest managed to dive to the mud in terror.
"Yes!" he yelled triumphantly as they zoomed over the top of their targets. "Fuck you, motherfuckers! How do like that on your ass?"
Skip cut sharply to the left the moment he was
past them and shot between two hills to the south of them, quickly getting them out of range. He pulled up just a little, cut back to the right to get around another set of hills, and then began a steep bank to spin back around for another pass.
"Skip," Christine's voice said over the radio. "What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy?"
"No crazier than you are, babe," he told her. "We're keeping them occupied while you get out of there. Keep moving as fast as you can. We're gonna make another run."
"Skip, they'll shoot you down," she protested.
"Just go!" he told her. "The sooner you get out of there, the less times we'll have to do this. Now do it!"
One of the men made a check on the two that had been shot by the helicopter and found that both of them, while still technically alive at the moment, were quite beyond salvation. Both had been peppered by multiple rounds about the torso. Both were gasping out their last. Finch, the private that reached them first, didn't even bother putting bullets into their heads. They were beyond even that.
The attack by air had come as a complete and total surprise, even though everyone had SEEN the fucking thing diving down at them from the first moment. They had thought that the aircraft that had been tormenting them for so long had suffered an engine failure, so rapidly had it come down out of the sky. There had been cheers of joy from Lima and his men as they had waited for the smash and the eruption of flame. And then suddenly it had pulled out of the fall and disappeared behind the hill. And then, while they'd still been trying to figure out the meaning of that, it was strafing them. No one had even managed to get a shot off at the cursed thing.
"Engine noise," one of the men suddenly yelled now. "Coming from that way!" He pointed off to the southwest, the direction the thing had disappeared in after the attack.
Lima listened, looking in that direction, and after a moment heard the whine of the helicopter's turbine engine. It was a high-pitched sound, audible only because the machine was cranked up to top speed. It was swelling rapidly, growing louder by the second.
"Get down," Lima yelled out, waving everyone back into the mud that they had just crawled out of. His men, those still alive, didn't have to be told twice. They threw themselves down and then quickly spread out, keeping distance between themselves and their companions so as not to become an easy target.
"Here it comes!" someone said as the sound grew louder. "One o'clock low!"
"Shoot it," Lima commanded, raising his M-16. "When it comes at us, everyone shoot at the motherfucker! Bring him down!"
"There they are," Skip said as they passed over the last rise. "Eleven o'clock. Lay it to 'em, Jase!"
"On target," Jack said, squeezing the trigger and releasing his clip of ammunition. Once again he raked his fire over as many as the prone figures as he could in the two seconds that they were in his sights. He thought that he might have hit one or two.
This run however, something new was added. Their targets were shooting back at them. As Skip flashed by them at 96 knots and three hundred feet above the ground, the flashes of weapons could clearly be seen. A second later there was a loud bang from underneath the helicopter and Sherrie screamed.
"What is it?" Skip said, banking severely to the right to clear the target area. "Are we hit?"
"A bullet just came up through the floor!" Sherrie told him.
"Are you hit?" he asked.
"No," she said. "I just..."
"Is anything in the chopper hit?" he interrupted.
"Uh... no, I think it ended up in the rope coil."
"Good," he said, banking back to the left. "Then don't worry about it."
Skip kept them low to the ground and their speed high as he raced back around the hill towards the other side of the hill. Green trees and large patches of brown flashed by beneath them in a blur of motion. A moment later, they shot right over the top of Christine and Rhonda once again, catching just the quickest glimpse of them.
"Goddammit," Skip said, pulling around in a tight turn to the right. "They're still not clear."
"Will one more pass do it?" Jack asked, pulling his expended magazine clear. "I only got one more clip in here."
"I guess it's going to have to," Skip said. "Get it ready."
He finished his bank and then lined up for another run, navigating by landmarks only. He passed over the top of Christine again, silently telling her to hurry up. And then he was following the edge of the hill between the two groups, hoping that this run would be enough.
The pursuers were a little faster with their guns this time. When they came around and lined up on them this time, the weapons were already flashing. As Jack opened up on them with the M-16, a burst of fire from one of their weapons found its mark. There was a bang from just below Skip's feet and a small spray of blood splashed in his face. Pain, severe and sharp, was suddenly shooting up his left leg, seeming to be centered in his knee.
"Skip!" Jack yelled in horror, his hands coming off of the gun. "Jesus Christ! You're hit!"
Skip continued his pass, not looking down to see how bad it was, not wanting to know until he got the helicopter clear of the target area. He pulled up a little, bringing their altitude up a hundred feet, and slacked off some of the speed. The pain in his leg continued to worsen, spreading up and down his entire body, throbbing with the beat of his heart. It felt like someone had installed a vice on his knee and was clamping it ruthlessly down, turn by turn.
Finally, unable to delay it any longer, he looked down, seeing nothing but bad news. His left leg was a mess. It appeared that a bullet had entered just below his kneecap, moving at an upward angle. It had exited just above his kneecap, blasting a hole the size of a silver dollar in his lower thigh. Muscle and fat tissue along with bone fragments, a piece of tendon, and a considerable amount of blood were all protruding from the exit wound.
"This is bad," Skip said, trying to move the leg a little. The moment his thigh shifted on the seat a large glut of blood gurgled out of the wound and the pain intensified to a level that actually made him sweat. "Owwww, Goddamn that hurts!" he yelled, his face grimacing.
"Skip?" Jack asked, his face worried. "Can you move your leg?"
"Not really," he said through gritted teeth.
"How are you going to land then?" Jack asked. "You can't maneuver at slow speed if your feet can't work the pedals."
"Let's worry about that," Skip answered, "after Christine is safe. Hang on, we're going back around." He banked to the right, adding a little more speed, trying to keep his worthless lower leg from flopping around. Blood continued to pour from it, soaking into the seat and pattering to the floor.
"What are we going back around for?" Jack asked. "We're out of ammo!"
"But they don't know that, do they?" Skip returned. "Just seeing us come at them will keep them in the mud for another minute or so. Hopefully that'll be enough. Now hang on."
He dove back down, heading for the front side of the hill once again. This time he did not go directly at the attacking men, choosing instead to cross at high speed to the right of them. The mere passage of the helicopter in their vicinity would probably be enough to keep them down and off of Christine's tail and since Jack did not have to actually aim and shoot at them, there was no point in getting close enough to be shot at effectively.
This worked just as he had hoped. They were close enough to see the men still in the same place they'd been during the first pass, close enough to see the flashes of six weapons shooting at them, but far enough away so that there were no more pops of bullets hitting the aircraft.
" Christine," Skip said into the microphone as he banked off to the right, "are you still down there? What's your status?"
"We're still moving," her weary, out of breath voice answered a moment later. "We're just passing the front of the hill now."
"I see her!" Jack yelled, pointing out the window. "She's at our two o'clock."
Skip looked and was able to see the tiny figures staggering onward. They were indeed past th
e front of the hill now, moving through a shallow gully between it and the next one. Though it was still technically possible for the men on the other side of the hill to catch up to them, it was unlikely unless they went into an all-out sprint. As long as Christine kept moving for another few minutes, she would more than likely be safe.
"It looks like you're safe, babe," Skip told her, breathing a sigh of relief. "Keep moving at the pace you are for now, but I think we kept them at bay long enough."
"Thanks Skip," she breathed back. "And how are you? Is anyone in there hit?"
"I got a little... uh... scratch to my leg. I'll be all right though. Everyone else is fine too."
"How little of a scratch?" she demanded. "Is it from a bullet?"
"It's from a bullet," he said. "A little one. I'll live. Now get your ass over to your trench and be sure to hold these fucks off. I don't think they'll attack again, they don't have enough people left, but you never know. They've been pretty fucking stupid so far."
"I copy," she said. "Is Paul on the way up to get Rhonda?"
"I don't know," Skip said. "Paul, are you out there?"
"I'm here," Paul said immediately, as if he had been awaiting a chance to break into the conversation. "I understand you're wounded, Skip. How bad is it?"
"My left knee's been shot," he said. "I'm still bleeding but I think I'll be okay once I get back on the ground."
"Will you be able to fly?" Paul wanted to know. "I've got three people that need immediate evac to El Dorado Hills. I don't know how bad Rhonda is, but it sounds like she might be a fourth."
Skip frowned a little and tried moving his leg once again. The pain was even worse this time. Now it felt as if the operator of the vice was not only tightening it shut but also burning the skin with a blowtorch at the same time. My God, he thought helplessly, will I even be able to land?
"Skip?" Paul asked. "Did you copy my question?"
"I copy," Skip told him. "Don't worry. One way or another, I'll get those people to El Dorado Hills. I'm gonna take one more look at the battle area and then I'm gonna come in for a landing. Get the wounded over to the LZ as quick as you can."