There only seemed to be two of them and they were still fighting, because we could hear the thunderclaps as well as their chain guns. Then I heard the sound from a couple days ago. The twin Rolls-Royce Merlins of Viggo's Mosquito. Unless there was another two-engine World War Two bird running around this area, and I rather doubt that. He had it fire-walled from the sound of it, and they must not have been expecting him, because he opened up with something BIG (the night-fighter variant had four twenty-millimeter air cannons, and four thirty-caliber machine guns). This thing was designed to knock bombers out of the sky, little bitty helicopters didn't stand a chance. Between Viggo and the thunderbird Mary called up, in seconds based on the sounds of explosions, and the sudden lack of the irritating sound of Little Bird engines, the air battle was over. Then they went to work on the troop transports. I heard one go down, and the other two bag ass, with Viggo in pursuit.
Then something I HADN'T heard lit up the woods where the second batch had just been dropped, and a loudspeaker crackled to life "This is the Federal Park police. You are under arrest. Drop your weapons and step into the open." The boys had shown up, we had a chance.
The guys on the ground immediately opened up on our chopper, and I heard the spang of bullets hitting the bird. One of them got the flood light, and our Lakota moved away a bit, and then went back into hover mode. So we were going to have backup soon. What remained to be seen was how the bad guys were going to react to this.
The answer to that seemed to be: with even more determination. I guess these guys figured it was fight or die time, because they started coming at us harder and faster than they had been before, and it got busy out. They also started deploying hand grenades. These aren't as much of a threat to a 'Thrope as they are to a normal, but if they're too close, they'll kill you just as dead. The dudes to the south, nominally behind us, were apparently occupied by whoever had been dropped off by the Lakota, or at least we weren't being attacked from there, so that was my guess.
This got confirmed when Yoshi suddenly showed up beside me to say that my friends were pinned down, but holding their own, and could we finish this quickly?
Well, I snarled something to the effect of "I'm doing my best, damn it!" When I looked, he was gone again. Which sort of pissed me off; I wanted to ask how many of them were left. Ammo wasn't a problem; we were taking enough off the dead to keep us supplied, for those that were using weapons other than tooth and claw, anyway. I started working my way back to Teador, when he worked his way up to me.
We both started to ask a question at the same time. I motioned him to proceed, while watching for movement on our front. He said "John, I've had about enough of this hiding and waiting for them to attack. Shall we bring the battle to them?"
Well, that was exactly what I was moving back to suggest, so I just nodded, and said "Yes, let's do that little thing." With that, he moved back to pass the word to the rest of the guys, and Mary. Soon, people started filtering up alongside me.
Pretty soon there were about fifteen of us, and Yoshi popped up beside me, saying "This is all that is left, John."
It must have been about midnight when I said "Pass it down the line, advance on my scream." I waited a couple minutes for everyone to get the word, and let out a scream. Not a human scream, but the scream of an angry cougar. If that didn't chill their blood, nothing would. The rest of the boys let out variations on their hunting scream and we were moving.
It took about fifteen minutes before Yoshi grabbed me by the shoulder and said "That's it John, there aren't any more."
At some point it had gotten to close work again, I sort of remember shooting with one hand and clawing with the other. I looked down and realized I was practically coated in blood, and I stank. I mean I REEKED. A combination of old blood, voided intestines, and gunpowder of the particularly smelly sort the military uses in 5.56 NATO ammo (it has a strong ammonia smell). I looked around and we were all there. A couple guys were holding body parts gingerly, bleeding, or lame on a leg, or foreleg/arm. One of the wolves was missing a foreleg, which means he'll have lost that arm when he changes, but we were all here.
Mary looked like Death warmed over, she was obviously exhausted, splattered in blood most of which seemed to belong to someone else. At some point she had captured a rifle, and was holding it at the low ready. I remember her having a tomahawk at some point, but I didn't see it now. She was the best thing that I had ever seen.
I looked at Teador, who seemed intact but was panting slightly, and covered in blood, and Yoshi, who looked like he had just stepped out of Samurai Quarterly (don't know how the bastard does it) and said "Gents, let's go finish this."
A half hour later it was all over. Once we came upon the guys that were trying to take out the SWAT team from the rear, it became a slaughter. We didn't get a single one of them to surrender, but we did get a few wounded captives. We also lost several cops. The FSRT team is going to have to re-man and re-equip, we lost Mike Lawson, and Bobby White, and Pete, well he's never going to be quite the same. A 'Thrope can heal from a lot of things, but Pete tried to toss back a grenade, something that we had each done before in the teams. Trouble is the guy that tossed this one cooked it for three seconds first. A 'Thrope can't regenerate a missing limb, and the grenade blew his right hand off half way up the wrist. He'll heal the rest of the damage eventually but he's lost his gun hand, and they're not going to put him back on the FSRT as a one-handed cop, even if they let him keep his badge and don't give him a medical. The docs say he'll keep his eye, and the face will heal, but the hand is gone.
Our Lakota acted as a medevac for the worst injured, including Pete, the rest of us waited for a troop transport from JBLM (Joint Base Lewis McChord). They sent out an ACH53 to pick us up, and two CH47's full of federal agents from every damn alphabet soup agency in the dictionary plus forensic types, to start documenting and examining what was probably the largest crime scene, area-wise, in modern history. Yeah, this one wasn't going to be sweep-under-the-rug-able. We had an air battle that was witnessed by hundreds of civilians, including a frakin' legendary beast thought to be allegorical by most of America, we had a running gun battle that covered forty or more miles as the thunderbird flies, oh, and let's not forget a Senator's chief of staff involved up to his supercilious eyeballs. Short of a magic "forget-about-it" spell, this one was making the papers.
The helo dropped us at JBLM, where LT. Murphy and Capt. Roberts were waiting for us, along with a whole plethora of medical professionals, psych counselors, lawyers, etc., etc. ad nauseum. The last thing I wanted to do at this point was talk to anyone that wasn't Mary, and the bosses seemed to understand and respect that, thank gods. Either that or they got one look at the guys piling off this bird and decided that pissing any of them off was just not a good idea. Murphy and Roberts limited their chat to "You guys did good, go clean up and get looked at by the docs, get some sleep, and we'll debrief in the morning." Then the Medics started in on us. Mary had taken a couple cuts and bruises, I had that graze to my ass cheek and tail, and more cuts and bruises. With the exception of Yoshi, every single one of us had some sort of trauma. They took us to Madigan, got us into showers and started doing the medical thing. One good thing was that JBLM and Madigan were the west coast home of the Rangers and a Greenie Beanie unit, so they had docs that were used to dealing both with trauma, and with 'Thropes. They had showers set up for us, and big platters of roast beef sandwiches for after the change. We all got scrubbed down and changed back to human form, fed as much chow as we could eat, and downed a lot of the army version of Gatorade, and got stitched up and given some clothes to put on. The worst wounded had already gone through this and were in surgery or recovery by this time. They told us that we could see them in the morning, but we weren't supposed to talk about what happened, until people could take our statements. They took us out to the parking lot, where they had vans waiting to run us out to a section of the BOQ that was going to be our home for a while, until the debrief was com
plete and they figured out what to do with us. Apparently, we weren't under arrest, or investigation, but they hadn't figured out just exactly what our status was. A little bird (well actually he was a Lt. Col. not a full bird, but he was little) showed up while we were being processed, and told me that the Commandant of the Marine Corps had taken a very personal interest in this, and was insistent that "These heroes be treated right
Then something completely unexpected happened. As we're standing outside milling around, and trying to get into the vans, a cloud showed up. It was most definitely a cloud, which is, after all, not unusual in the "Pacific North Wet". What was unusual was that this one came down out of the cloudy dawn sky, and descended to the parking lot. It was also a most unusual cloud in that it had distinct edges, almost like it was solid. It lightly touched down on the far end of the parking lot, and the most gods-awful cacophony of noise, full of something like a kettle drum, horns, and some sort of weird string instrument started playing. We were all looking around in shock, or at least all of us except Yoshi. Yoshi was on his knees and face, damn near prone, facing the cloud.
Yoshi, on his knees? Well, this wasn't at all normal behavior. Out of the cloud stepped two of the biggest guys I've ever seen, in a lifetime of seeing BIG guys. These dudes looked like they could grab a bull by the horns and stiff-arm lift him off the ground for a couple hours. They were both very Japanese, samurai looking dudes, except for the tails. They had fox tails, four of them each. They stepped out and advanced; right behind them came little girls spreading flower petals, and the whole place suddenly smelled of cherry blossoms, and a warm breeze drifted through as if someone had pushed the "spring" button on the celestial control panel. Behind the little girls, there were little boys doing cartwheels and back flips, then a second set of the great big guys, and then this little bitty gal. This gal was obviously Japanese, but hands down, the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. We're talking Helen of Troy legendary beautiful here, every single jaw in the parking lots dropped as one, and I could practically hear various parts popping to attention. Then she turned it off, like a switch, and standing there was just a very pretty, ageless Japanese girl..with nine fox tails.
One of the drivers was Japanese, as were two of the doctors, and they both hit the deck in the same position as Yoshi. OK, I'm a Gaijin, and slow, but hit me over the head with a big enough club and even I can get a clue. This had to be the Kitsune Empress, so as she came forward I gave my best courtly bow. Sorry Your Empress ma'am but by mind set, I'm Norse, and the Norse don't even hit their knees for our own gods, I'm sure not doing it for someone else's. Well, apparently that was good enough, because I got a nod of approval from a couple of the guards, and herself looked at me with a distinct twinkle in her eye before continuing on.
She walked up to Yoshi, and stopped in front of him, saying "Arise Yoshi Hakamura, of four tails." Now the really odd thing about this was her voice. I heard it twice, once in Japanese, and echoing in English, a half beat behind, but perfectly audible. I'm not sure if it was a spell, or an innate part of who/what she was, but it was cool, if a little bit disorienting.
"Yoshi Hakamura, the wind has spoken your name, the crickets have chirped it in my window at night. Everywhere I go, I hear your name. This is most troublesome. I tasked you with a simple job, but three hundred and fifty years ago. How you have performed at this task, I wonder. I see nowhere any of the family that I tasked you to protect. Explain yourself."
"Most exalted one, Mistress of the nine tails, I have no excuse. May I be permitted to apologize to my ancestors?" As he said this, he reached for his wakizashi. Whatever she was doing with her voice, Yoshi seemed to be able to do it too.
"NO YOU MAY NOT! I did not come all this way, and touch this foreign soil, just to see the noble blood shed. No I have another fate in mind for you my knight errant. I have seen what you have done. The nightingales and the crows carried the tales to me of your fealty. That which happened to your family was no fault of yours, and your courage and dedication in the face of calamity was admirable. You are missing something, my little fox."
"Oh greatest of my race, if you would not have my blood, why then are you here? Am I to be called finally home?" This last in a hopeful voice.
"No, my little fox, you are not coming home." Yoshi's face fell. "For you are home. Did I not say you were missing something?"
"Yes Mistress, but I do not understand."
"You are missing your fifth tail, allow me to fix that." And without as much as a blink or movement, Yoshi's tails were visible, and suddenly there was a fifth one. "You are released from this task, but you are not released from my service, for I have a new task for you. You will stay here in this land, and you will form a new line. For there are many of our people here, and they deserve to have the joy and pleasure of our presence here in this land as they do in the glorious land of our birth, the land of the Rising Sun. To this end I will send you maidens, with whom you might create this new line, and you will be my representative here in America. Establish an embassy with the other Fay of this land, and carve out our place here."
Yoshi looked a little pale, and worried at this. "Oh great one, I am not prepared for this task. How shall I proceed? What if my performance is not to your liking?"
"Of course you are not prepared for this task; no one is. You shall proceed as you think best, with a minimum of consulting with me, for I tire of this. It is in your paws now. Are you not a five-tailed Fox? If your performance is not to my liking I will ask for your apology, but you may not give it unless I ask. I must leave now, this land is not mine yet, and until you make an embassy, I am here on sufferance." With that bomb dropped, she and all the rest of the circus walked back into the cloud, which seemed suddenly only a step behind them, and the cloud dispersed, like fog on a sunny morning. Left standing where the cloud used to be were five Japanese women, all beautiful and all looking about 19, except for the tails: one had five, one had four, and the other three had three each. Just as quickly the tails disappeared, and there were just five pretty Japanese girls, all of whom ran up to Yoshi and started to talk to him in rapid-fire Japanese. This time it wasn't translated.
After that, the rest of the load-up and travel to the BOQ was anticlimactic. We got in and were assigned rooms, or in the case of myself and Mary, and Yoshi and his new, well I don't know what to call them. Wives? Mistresses? Concubines? Keepers? Anyway, Yoshi and his girls and Mary and I each got suites. Now I would like to intimate that Mary and I were intimate, before bed, but that would be a lie, we just collapsed into bed, and practically went into a coma. Some fifteen hours later we finally woke up.
The next two weeks were one long bout of reports, and debriefs and question and answer periods, and every other possible way that you can come up with to describe telling everything that happened, in every format that you can imagine. We were disposed, questioned, asked to affirm, interviewed, and generally screwed with for two long weeks. During that time, we got a chance to visit the guys in the hospital almost every day. They were getting the same treatment in as much detail as the doctors would allow. I was told that they were doing the same thing to Viggo, and to his troops that were involved. What transpired as to Viggo's private little air force, I don't know, but he later told me that, while the powers that be weren't particularly happy with his having an armed and fully equipped night fighter, they really couldn't do squat about it, due to his having a class three license and so on and so forth. So they yelled, threatened, and blustered a bit, and then shut up and went away.
He also related that Barry Daniels had gotten away from him. The guy who was piloting Barry's chopper was REALLY good, and managed to keep in places that Viggo couldn't go, until they got over a populated area, and then he set it down in the middle of the Walmart parking lot, where a Hummer was waiting to pick him up. We also found out that several of the guys in the dead or captured members of Barry's crew had silver plated 'Tiger Claws' (four-bladed knives held in a closed fist with the blades
between the fingers) on their bodies. The survivors are being charged with Sgt. Brown's murder, along with so many other crimes that it'll take an hour just to read the charges at trial.
Senator Brown is, of course, livid and shocked, that radical extremists had infiltrated his organization, and that his very Chief of Staff was apparently behind the murder of his son. He announced a reward for the capture or evidence of the death of his former Chief of Staff, and burst into tears on national television. The Press ate it up, and his polls went up ten points. It all looked a little too pat and planned to me. I wasn't sure who the guy behind Barry was, but I sort of liked the good Senator for the role. There's going to be congressional investigations, etc., it's going to be ugly for a while to have been ANYWHERE near this thing, unless you're the Park rangers and Park Police. We came out smelling faintly of roses. The FPI on the other hand, well, they smelled more like they had taken a bath in a septic tank on a hot day. Sucks to be them. Do I sound unsympathetic? Gosh, sorry (snicker).
In the end, all of the guys that came out of the mountains were medically retired with full disability. All but Yoshi, who was already retired. After medical evaluations, most of the guys were put in outpatient clinics for treatment of PTSD. Teador and Yoshi were exceptions to that rule, it seems that the mountains had done their magic on them. Several of the guys had medals coming from various actions; some of the guys that didn't make it did as well. The Marine Corps took a personal interest in making sure that the guys were set up for success.
Pete lost his right hand, and was put behind a desk while he went through rehab, but they're going to let him keep his badge. He'll probably end up doing the detective thing with me once he gets finished with the docs. While he lost a hand, he gained a girl. Alex spent every day that she could by his bedside waiting for him to come to, only so that she could jump his shit for trying to be a "Gods-Damned Hero" instead of just doing his duty. They've been going out ever since.
Keeping The Faith (John Fisher Chronicles Book 2) Page 29