“Where are we going?” Adams asked. “The nearest safe place I can think of is the Base.”
“Put me down in the midst of government employees? I don’t think so.” I rolled my eyes but they couldn’t see them. I checked the GPS for a decent place to land and found one far enough out of town where access from a road wasn’t possible in case the SUVs managed to keep us in sight.
“Don’t look now but we’ve got another chopper on our tail,” Lindsey shouted. I jerked around and sure enough, a military grade helicopter with black paint and no markings were following us.
“Is it one of yours?” I shouted and Adams turned to look.
“No. Maybe CIA or some such. It’s unmarked so I’d bet it’s Black Ops,” he returned.
“Let’s hope they’re not armed,” I said grimly and no sooner had I said that they fired upon us.
“Rocket!” Adams screamed and I dropped down almost touching the trees. Not that the maneuver would deter the rocket. Probably a LAWS from the speed it was moving and I had an idea how to dodge those.
“They’ll kill you!” Lindsey shouted. “I thought they wanted you alive!”
“They do. They don’t care if you die in the crash, they assume I’ll heal if I get hurt.” I calculated the speed and angle of the rocket and at the very last second, turned broadside as my passengers yelled in disbelief but Adams grinned and threw open both door hatches so that the rocket simply blew straight through the opening and past the astonished noses of my passengers. Might have singed a few nose hairs but then, who needs ‘em anyway? We saw it explode into a grove of red pine and blow the three-foot-thick trunks into matchsticks as pine cones lobbed up like grenades, branches flying like chaff in the wind.
“Look for a tunnel or overpass. Where’s the nearest overpass or train tunnel?” I demanded but then I remembered the long span of a bridge over one of the mountain gorges we would have crossed coming over the traditional route into Red Lodge. The trouble was that it was too far away and offered no place to hide something as large as a chopper nor did this area have tunnels through the mountain where I could fly the bird in and hide it.
I turned around and headed straight at the other helio in a game of chicken, so close that I could see the other pilot’s eyes. Wide, shocked and full of terror. He broke first before I did but that wasn’t the point. I drove the blades into his Perspex windscreen, metal shrieked as it bit and crumpled, slammed the skids down on his roof, knocking the chopper out of the air. The turbines whined and yowled worse than a Siamese cat in heat and sparks flew off both machines. We were stuck to his in a parody of two metal beasts mating and I could watch his face screaming curses at me. The men in back with pistols couldn’t aim because both birds were whirling in circles. Yawing out of control.
We rode it down and at the last minute, I jogged hard left, disentangling the twisted metal beyond its stress point and we broke apart going two separate ways. We crashed into a small grove of young blue spruce and they hit the rocky outthrust of the ridge’s peak. The branches bent rather than broke, bounced as our broken blades tore them to pieces but the boughs were springy and thick enough to cushion our landing as if we’d landed on a giant air mattress.
We hit the ground about as hard as if we’d fallen from the top step of a six-foot stepladder. Still, there were groans and blood, bruises but I was almost certain that no one had sustained worse than a nosebleed. We heard a dull thump from below us; it was as close as a hundred yards and followed by a bright flash with a greasy black column of smoke.
“Everyone okay?” I asked sitting sideways against the right door of the bird. We’d crashed on the right side, the rotors jammed into the ground against a chopped trunk of hemlock. I pulled off the headphones and released my seatbelt. In the back, Adams and Pentelli were doing the same.
“Any injuries?” I pushed medical equipment out of the way that had dislodged in the crash. Scrambling over the seat, I checked on the five men. Other than a few dazed looks, no one seemed to be injured.
“Doc, Sergeant, gather up the blankets, first aid kits, and water bottles. Any weapons. The men in those SUVs will be on our trail along with any survivors from the crash.”
“It exploded,” Lindsey pointed out.
“They might have bailed before. I’m not staying around to find out,” I said and stood up so I could push the left-hand door open. It was higher than my head and the movement hurt my ribs and my hips as I levered myself out so I was extra careful how I slid out the side door down to the ground.
I’d crashed the chopper in a fairly young stand of spruce and chosen the spot for that reason. Young and springy, the branches and thin trunks had caught and absorbed the craft letting it slide down without much damage to us inside and preventing the chopper from blowing up.
Most of the blades had sheared off on contact with the other helicopter so we didn’t have to worry about shrapnel as we hit the ground. All six of us stood in the small clearing our sudden descent had created and five of us wondered where we were.
“We have to leave. Ready?” I looked around. We were on the north slope of the mountain about halfway up the crest, on a ridge between two valleys. The trees were all firs, with blue spruce and piñon pine predominating. It smelled strongly of pine, the bruised and broken branches had released pine resin and the branches slowly returned to their former angles from where our passage through had forced them. They crackled with snaps that sounded like .22s but the sound coincided with the gusts of wind so I knew where they were coming from. That is to say, they weren’t shots fired at us from the survivors of the crash. If there were any. We caught a whiff of burning Avgas and the unmistakable odor of burning flesh. After that, I heard the sounds of exploding shells and the right-of-way suggested we move off before one of us was shot by accident. They seemed to think one or more of our pursuers had survived and were shooting at us. I knew better---there was no rhythm to the shells going off.
The doc wrapped my feet in layers of ace bandages over cut pieces of blanket. Gathering what gear they deemed necessary, I led them off into the deep woods. The MPs ranged behind and to the sides of me and after I tripped for the nth time, Dr. Pentelli told us to stop so he could do something about my feet and lack of clothing. I wasn’t cold, I automatically adjusted my body temp to keep me warm but kept it low enough so that I didn’t ‘smurf’. But I wasn’t able to do anything about my tender feet on the rocky ground, pine needles and broken branches. Walking barefoot on pine needles was akin to walking on pin cushions with the pins pointed up.
He insisted on cutting a hole in another one and making a poncho for me to wear. When I told him I wasn’t cold, he said it was more for him, he was tired of looking at my bare ass.
“Well, if you people would design something better, my ass wouldn’t be hanging in the breeze,” I complained.
Pentelli laughed. “It is the best design that they could come up with, Lakan. Easy on, easy off, easy access to IVs and treatments. How do your feet feel? Your pelvis, legs and ribs?” His hand was on my wrist and I caught him taking my pulse.
“Sore but not too bad. Considering we just came through a plane crash,” I grinned back. “First thing I need to do is wrangle up some clothes.”
“We ain’t gonna find them out here,” Adams said. “Cool trick with the rocket, though.” He grinned at me and I grinned back.
“Yeah, it was. The only thing I could think of at the time. There will be cabins out here.” I shook my head and brought up in my memory a map of the area. “There’s one not too far from here, about six, seven miles that way.” I pointed northwest up over the ridge.
We started hiking. Thankfully, all of them were in decent shape. Actually, I was more worried about my own stamina than theirs.
The MPs disappeared quite a few times, falling back to check if anyone had followed us. I didn’t worry about the three after the first time; Sgt. Adams found our trail without any effort and seemed equally at home in the woods as I did. He drifted close as I scouted out the easiest route up the ridge before I committed us to climbing it.
I found a deer trail and called a rest. The Sergeant helped me bend down against a tree trunk and rest my back on it. Red pine. Sticky resin stuck to my blanket.
“There are men following us,” he whispered.
“How close?” I asked without moving my lips.
“Couple klicks behind. I saw them from the top of the ridge a while back. Down in the valley coming off a paved road that skirts the lower part of this ridge. I saw them climbing on the power lines right-of-way.”
I closed my eyes and brought up my image map of the area. Saw where the hi-tension lines right-of-way ran relative to our position. Opened my eyes in alarm.
“If they have ATVs and GPS, they’ll cut us off from the cabin before we can reach it. We need the gear in there to escape and survive,” I worried.
“You know Houston and Deveraux will have men tracking us down.”
We heard the sound of choppers in the air. Several of them. “Sounds like they’re still a few miles away,” Jeff said. “They’ll find the crash site.”
“But maybe not ours. The trees covered back over our landing and it was thick enough to disguise the crash. Planes come down out here and aren’t found for years, decades. The only way they’ll find it is if they’re on the ground searching for the burning chopper and stumble on our crash site,” I said. “Then, they’ll know we all walked out alive. We have to hustle.”
I climbed to my feet and finished the bottle of water that one of them had brought from the wreck. I noticed that no one else drank. “Go ahead, fill up on water, there are springs we can refill from. Water won’t be a problem.”
I waited and they passed around the bottle emptying it and I watched to make sure they didn’t throw the plastic away. We would need it to carry more when we did find a spring. Looking up, I picked out the route I wanted before we started the climb. In minutes, my calves and hamstrings were complaining of the gradient. As long as it wasn’t so steep that I had to use my hands and knees, I was happy. I’m sure the sight of my bare cheeks wasn’t making them thrilled either but no one complained.
Fifteen minutes later, all six of us were on the ridge. There was plenty of cover so I wasn’t worried about being sky-lined but I did worry about the pursuit using FLIR to hi-light us. Luckily, no helicopters had flown over since we’d left the crash site.
There was a decent trail atop the ridge, I’d picked up the subtle signs of deer hooves on the slope and followed. Made by mule deer and elk, they had picked out the easiest path and that would take us to both water and feeding areas. Several times, I called a halt so that we could watch does flit past, heavy with fawns. They wouldn’t start dropping their babies for another month.
We didn’t see any bucks but they would be coming down to the meadows as soon as it got dark. I kept walking until dark because I was afraid that our pursuit would reach the cabins before us.
Two hours after our chopper crashed, I stopped at the edge of a narrow road that really could be called a trail. As wide as a four-wheeler track, it opened up to a tiny clearing only as large as the cabin which was a 12x12 box with a stove pipe chimney and rusty tin roof.
The cabin looked abandoned. The tax rolls had it paid up to the present, its owners three men who hunted every year during deer season, both bow and black powder. It was stocked and we’d find whatever we needed to survive the woods inside. The owners were so rich that they normally left all their weapons and gear behind, replacing what they needed before they hiked in from the road, some twenty miles back down a trail that even four-wheelers found difficult.
I checked the perimeter, walking slowly and carefully around the cabin using the trees for cover. I saw no evidence of any vehicles in the grass nor footsteps in the loam or pine needles. Watching the birds, crows and ravens looked back at me yet they remained unconcerned. No animals acted as if enemies were coming, even the red squirrels and chipmunks didn’t scold me.
Only when I was sure no one waited to ambush us, did I walk up to the cabin’s door. The outside was made of sheet metal with wood framed windows. Anything wood lower than three feet would be chewed by porcupines and smashed in by bears seeking food or someplace to sleep over the winter. Same reason there were steel bars on the windows and doors, front and back. There was an attached shed filled with 14 in. chunks of split firewood and a generator with a 55-gallon drum filled with diesel. I wondered how they had brought that in on four-wheelers. Then again, the owners were rich enough that they might have airlifted most of the building materials in by chopper.
The key was hanging on the back wall of the outhouse and opened both the iron bars and the door. The inside was hand polished cedar tongue and groove, a mini mansion that belied its outward exterior. Kerosene lanterns and propane ran the appliances but what excited me the most was the closet full of clothing and the beautiful compound bow hanging on the wall over the twin beds.
I grabbed that before anyone else and pulled back the bowstring, noting the ease of the draw. She had an eighty-pound pull so her owner must have been a bull. On the floor, I found an aluminum case with a dozen arrows, some with hunting points and some target heads. Two fletcher’s gloves, interchangeable for left and right handed.
The others raided the pantry, pulling out cans and vacuumed sealed and dehydrated foodstuffs, packing it all into duffle bags found in the bottom of the closet. I found jeans and cargo pants in camo patterns but better yet, climbing leggings, flannel shirts and a down vest which offered comfort, warmth without bulk. In a pinch, it could also serve as a pillow. In a bag near the back wall, I found hiking boots and thin-soled expensive climbing shoes with a bendable sole. The owner or son must have been a free climber, I found more gear packed in a light weight rucksack. Pitons, ropes, carabineers, rosin and gloves with the fingertips cut off. A helmet and headlamp with extra batteries.
Canteens and iodine purification tablets were in a waterproof box along with self-striking matches, a compass and striker stone. Flints. Whoever this camper was, he was clearly into rough country camping and survival. I even found a smoke jumper’s fire cover and space blanket.
I allowed no more than fifteen minutes to eat, drink but told them not to use the outhouse but go in the woods and bury it. A fresh pile of human feces in the outhouse would tell everyone we had been here. Nothing was to be heated for the same reason, the smell of food carried and we had to leave no trace that we’d been here.
Dr. Pentelli handed me a protein bar and a sandwich made from spam and crackers. I ate hungrily and gave the cabin one last look, checked to see that we’d left no sign in the grass and took them back the way we’d come in. The little sign our feet had made, I swept away using a handful of grass pulled from various places and then threw scattered leaves atop the rest.