Chapter Eighteen
Blood in the Snow
It had been a week of constant off and on snow during which I decided that it would be best to continue on our way to the south. We had met with no trouble, up till this point in our journey south, so it was best to continue on, as food was no longer a problem. Our tiger companion had brought two more deer by and dropped them off during the course of the week. We were all well rested and healthy and I decided to go on the way we had been. Trent didn’t like it, but he respected my decision and didn’t voice anything to the contrary.
The packs were ready to go and they were definitely heavier with the gold added to them. The ball had been about a third full of gold dust. In this part of the world or anywhere else for that matter it was a fortune. I didn’t care about the wealth of it though. Trent was right in suggesting that the gold could be extremely useful as a bribe and we may yet have need of such an advantage in our journey south. I just wished it didn’t weigh so much.
I hadn’t had the heart to deprive our tiger companion of his adolescent play toy so I had refilled the ball half full of sand and left it out for him to play with. He was lounging against it, with one cheek resting propped on it at this very moment, as a matter of fact.
I was so grateful, in many ways now, that I hadn’t shot him, when I’d had the chance to. Life could often be unexpected with the surprises that it gave.
The tiger’s ears perked up. He was instantly on his feet and then with several lunging strides he was out of view. They’d found us! I’d waited too long this time in one location.
Trent came at a run from where he had been collecting firewood and I yelled, “They found us! We’ve got to get to the forest!” I said swinging on one of the packs, but Trent shook his head decisively no.
“They have a chopper! We’d never make it on foot! We have to stay and fight this one out.”
He was right, but how were we to fight and make it count?
“Gold isn’t all I found in the mine shaft. Come on!”
I swung my pack off, as Trent took charge and I followed him into the part of the dugout that housed the mine portal.
He gestured down the primary mine shaft, “It leads all the way through the hill to the other side. It’s where he dumped his spoil.”
He shined his flashlight over to a darker corner of the mine. There was a dusty looking wooden crate sitting on the floor. Going to it he took the lid off the crate gingerly. I looked inside to see that it was half full of dynamite sticks that were sweating with age, which meant they were extremely unstable.
“Those sticks are leaking nitroglycerin. It’s liable to blow up, as soon, as you shift that crate one inch.” I said.
Trent nodded, “That’s a chance I’ll have to take.”
“What’s your plan?” I asked.
“We make it look like we’re still here and let them come in close. I’m going to suspend this crate in the other room to make it higher than the expected gunfire into the dugout will be. When the gunfire ceases and they come to check on our dead bodies Deshavi will pull on a cord, which I’ll attached to the crate. She’ll be at the other end of the mine shaft on the hillside exit. The crate falling to the floor should be enough to set off this unstable dynamite. You and me, meanwhile, will circle around the hill to either side of the enemy and come up on their rear. Hopefully the blast will take some of them out and be a distraction to the rest of them. We’ll take the survivors out or die trying. If we succeed we get a chopper, if we don’t Deshavi still has a chance to run for it.”
Deshavi looked about to object as she looked from one to the other of us, but I cut her off. “It’s a good plan! Let’s get started on it.” I said, as I pulled Deshavi along. I pulled Trent’s pack off and more or less dragged it and Deshavi down the dark central mine shaft toward the hillside exit on the other side of the hill.
Trent waited for us to be gone before he started the process of moving the crate. Stepping through the hillside exit I blinked against the harsh glare of the sunlight off the snow. We waited relaxing in every moment that we didn’t hear the rumble of an explosion.
It was taking too long and as I started to edge toward the mine entrance, in order to investigate, Trent finally appeared looking a bit gray in the face. He handed the end of a cord of rope to Deshavi, who just looked overly relieved to see him again.
“They’ve got the dugout ringed in. I left some bullets to cook on the stovetop, when they go off they’ll likely start firing on the dugout. When they stop, give it a good 100 count and then jerk the rope hard. Then head off into those trees and wait, if we don’t come back beat it out of here honey!”
“But I love you!” Deshavi said looking miserable.
“I love you too darling, but this is the way it’s got to be!” Trent started to turn away, but Deshavi grabbed a hold of his neck and kissed him.
I understood her emotion, but bullets were cooking. I helped pull Deshavi loose and Trent said, “This isn’t goodbye Deshavi!”
We left her there crying with the rope clutched in her hands.
Adrenaline pumping through my old veins helped me churn my way through the deep snow, as I made my way around the hill and through the forest, as fast as I could go. Bullets started going off and then a mass volley of fire erupted. The sound of the gunfire further aided me in my mad dash through the deep snow. I wasn’t going to let Trent face this fight alone.
Huffing and puffing I kicked my way down hill to the forest’s edge. Trying to gather my breath, as my heart felt like it was about to pound out of my chest, I peered around the trunk of a tree. My grip on my rifle was sweaty despite the cold.
Several snowmobiles were pulled up and about fifteen men stood in a semicircle around the front of the dugout filling it full of lead. Trent must’ve put the fragile dynamite up higher than I had imagined he could have, because the dugout was literally riddled with holes everywhere. It actually looked like it was on the point of collapse.
The heavy firing finally ceased.
I glanced at the snowmobiles. They would have needed a transport chopper to bring those along. They must’ve set it down in a clearing back a ways from us. Mentally I was ticking off the seconds, as Deshavi would be doing right now. Two men detached from the group and approached the dugout’s shattered door. They kicked it inward and stepped inside. They were gone for a moment, but then reappeared and started to say something to those gathered outside, when the dugout blew sky high.
The two men were instantly vaporized in the fiery blast, even as the thirteen remaining men were knocked flat into the snow. I didn’t waste a moment in adding to the death toll. I started firing upon the downed men, even as another rifle belched flame from the tree line at the opposite side of the clearing.
The men caught out in the open tried to recover, but rose only to be ripped apart, as their blood sprayed outward to stain the snow crimson. It was over in a minute or less.
I shifted away from the tree I had been leaning against just as a bullet slammed into it were my head had just been. I wheeled around firing from the hip and caught a native looking man with several bullets to the chest. He would have been one of the trackers, which meant there could still be more scouts out in the forest!
Deshavi wasn’t safe!
That must’ve occurred to Trent as well, because glancing back I saw him roaring away on a snowmobile, as the burning wreckage of the dugout stained the clear sky with black smoke. I had to leave Deshavi’s safety to Trent. I raced downhill half tripping in the snow to another snowmobile.
I shot the other snowmobiles up before mounting mine, which I fired up and gunned in a spew churned spray of snow away from the clearing. I had to secure that chopper!
I followed the tracks through the forest at high speed. It was my speed or perhaps Divine favor, which caused the bullets off to my left to zing wide of me. I lifted the rifle up one-handed and began to spray away with it using up my last ammo clip, as I swerved in and around tree trunks and boulders. The native tracker now visibly firing at me stood up higher and pitched over as my gun clicked empty. Not a bad one armed gesture for an old man I grimly acknowledged to myself with pride.
The chopper was up ahead and as far as I could tell it was guarded by only one man, who was likely the pilot. At first he seemed to sense nothing wrong with my approach, but then something changed and he was reaching for a pistol at his waist. I swirled back and forth in an attempt to miss the wild shots that he directed at me. In a panicked scream he gave up, as the pistol clicked empty and he turned to run for the old troop transport chopper. He didn’t make it though, before I ran the snowmobile right over top of him pressing him down into the snow.
I stopped and got off the snowmobile and quickly armed myself with weapons still left in the chopper. I put the man suffering in the snow out of his misery with one well-placed shot. I then rifled through the chopper in search of supplies and anything that might prove useful. I loaded up what I found onto the snowmobile.
I looked up to see another snowmobile approaching. It was Trent and Deshavi. Deshavi had a few scrapes on her face, from what I presumed had been a tussle with a tracker, but she looked good otherwise. She gripped a pistol in one fist and looked ready to use it if need be.
“Can you fly a chopper?” I asked Trent.
Trent nodded, but said, “Don’t you think they’ll pick up on us taking a chopper out of here? One of these trackers still running around has likely radioed in what’s going on here to someone!”
“Exactly, which is why we’re going with your plan. We’ll head to the coast on these snowmobiles and bribe our way out.”
“While the chopper heads South, as a decoy and attracts all the attention!” Trent said completing my thought.
Trent wasted no time in firing up the chopper. He took it aloft and it hovered there for a moment. A rope fell from it to the ground that was close to 100 feet in length. The chopper started away and then Trent was skating down the rope at breakneck speed, with only two carabineers hooked to it. He’d be lucky, if he didn’t break a leg, at the rate of descent he was coming down at.
He seemed to slow down a little just before slipping past the end of the rope and landing heavily in the deep snow of the clearing some 200 feet away from us. The snowmobiles roared to life and Deshavi and I headed for him, as the chopper sped out of view towards the south on autopilot. Trent sat up stiffly in the snow and I helped him up onto the snowmobile behind Deshavi.
As far as I could tell he hadn’t broken anything, but he was pretty shook up. In his befuddlement of pain he grasped around for something to hang on to, but found nothing. Deshavi pulled his arms tightly around her and I heard her say, “Hang on to me, because I’m never going to let go of you!”
Trent smiled wanly before resting his head forward onto her shoulder.
I patted him on the back, as I headed for my snowmobile. The man had given his all in the rescue of his woman and in the process of doing so, with some Divine help, he had rescued more than just her mortal flesh, but also the very essence of who she was as a person as well. Nothing more could be asked of a man in the protection of his woman than that.
I got on my snowmobile and meeting Deshavi’s eyes I said, “Let’s go home!”
We took off, headed up the valley, toward the coastline to the east of us. The snowmobiles and the extra gas that I’d packed along would get us most of the way there. We’d be able to walk the rest of the way easily.
Chatta brought up the high powered rifle and squinted, as he sighted through the scope at the retreating snowmobiles. It had been a clever ploy to send the chopper headed south, as a decoy, while they headed for the coast. If he’d had his radio he would’ve apprised his handlers of the situation, but he’d lost it in the snow, when that witch had clocked him on the head with a piece of wood.
He’d thought he’d had her and then all he’d seen were stars and then a crashing darkness. He’d awoken to his men all dead and the sounds of the chopper being started. In a way they’d done him a service by eliminating everyone else. Now only he could get the credit and the reward for taking them out.
He aligned the crosshairs squarely on the back of the man slumped forward against the woman. The power of the rifle would carry the bullet on through the man and take out the witch too. With those two out of the way he’d wing the old man, who had kept the other two alive and free over the past month or so.
The old man had caused no end of discomfort and aggravation and Chatta intended to see him suffer; only coming to the peace of death after much pain. It had been a thing of luck that he had, even caught them now. Fortunately for him he had remembered this place from a time years earlier, when he had successfully caught and killed a beautiful specimen of a Siberian Tiger.
There had been a cub, which had escaped him at the time, but he’d come back later for it. He hadn’t gotten it though, because of the meddlesome efforts of a hill miner in the area. He may not have gotten the cub, before he’d left the second time, but he’d made sure that he’d fixed the miner up with a nice going away present.
Chatta let his breath exhale out, as he sighted down on the young couple. His finger had begun to pull the trigger, when he heard the snow shift close by. Not wanting to break his concentration on targeting the couple, but his instinct as a hunter demanding so of him, he glanced off to the side and saw orange striping right beside his head!
A drop of saliva splattered down upon his cheek and in dawning horror he twisted to stare up into the face of savagery at its finest. The awful husky roar of a tiger ushered forth drowning out the high pitched scream of fright emanating from Chatta’s lips. The massive canine tipped jaws spread wide and descended in a vicious chomp onto Chatta’s head. Some things are never forgotten, even by animals.