Echo Six: Black Ops 7 - Tibetan Fury (27 page)

They were crouched behind a rocky outcrop, but the protection it offered was minimal. They could see the barrel of the cannon shifting aim to point right at them. Then the helo dipped sharply and started to tip sideways, and their hopes rose.

But the pilot recovered control, gained a few meters in height, and side slipped to come around behind them. They were in full view of the gunship, staring at the enormous mouth of the cannon as the gunner made his adjustments for the altered firing angle. They saw the barrel move slightly, and the craft was so close they could see the gunner staring down at them. His mouth was open, and his teeth parted in a huge smile.

"Bastard's enjoying it," Guy commented.

No one made any reply. On that stark, bare mountainside, they knew they were about to die. They'd done everything mortally possible, and they'd come close, but close wasn't enough, and they were going to die. The snipers started shooting, standing out in the open, not bothering to look for cover. There was none, and you can only be killed once.

Several men fired off their remaining rounds, but slowly the shooting died away as they expended the last of their ammunition. Talley briefly considered pulling out his pistol.

What the hell!
I’ve had a good life, and we put up a good fight. I may as well throw bagels at the armored gunship as pop 9mm rounds at it. Besides, if I’m badly hurt, I may need a couple of those rounds to finish things off.

It came even closer, the heavy rotor wash churning up the snow around them, and they saw the pilot fighting with the controls, his face tense. The gunner's lips moved, and it was obvious he was shouting at the pilot to keep the craft stable.

"I'd like to get my hands on those bastards before I die," Talley said to Guy, smiling.

"Maybe you can come back to haunt him, if there's an afterlife," the SAS man replied.

Talley didn't reply at first. The pilot had got his craft under control and edged nearer to them. Then he looked at Guy.

"I reckon this is it."

"You're wandering all over the sky, man. You're an idiot!"

"I'm doing my best, Sir. We're already several hundred meters above the service ceiling for this helicopter. It's all I can do to stop us crashing into the mountainside."

"I don't give a damn about the mountainside. If you don't get control, I can't line up the gun on the bandits."

"Sir, they're not all bandits. Some of them are nuns, can't you see?"

"I told you they're bandits. I don't give a shit if they're nuns or not. Get this helicopter under control, so we can finish the job and go home."

A pause. "I'll side slip away from the target and come back in a different angle."

The pilot continued to wrestle with the collective and the rudder pedals, fighting the inclination of the craft to tip sideways in the thin atmosphere and crash into the rocks below. The craft was increasingly unstable, and he should return to base and refuse to continue this insane operation. But it wasn't an option. He had a family back in China, and this State Security officer was quite capable of putting them all in a labor camp if he refused to obey orders.

There was something else. Several times he'd been able to line up for the Major to open fire, and he'd pretended to almost lose control and moved away. He felt sorry for the poor devils on the mountain below him. After all, they were Buddhists like him, and many of them monks and nuns at the mercy of the fierce winds and bitter cold. Struggling to breathe the thin air, they'd be suffering badly.

He'd thought about returning to base and damn the consequences, but fear for his family had kept him flying the mission. He brought the helicopter around yet again and maneuvered it closer to the people on the mountainside. He ran into a powerful headwind that slowed his forward progress, but the effect was to give the craft more lift and stability. He couldn't pretend anymore. It had to be done. He closed his eyes and held her steady, waiting for the Major to open fire. He couldn't look, didn't care if they crashed. It was as if he was absenting himself from the scene of the attack.

Perhaps in the next life I will be able to make recompense for this shameful, cowardly action. I only wish it could be different.

He heard the Major's shout of exultation.

"We're almost in position. Hold it like that!"

And then the radio came to life. It was his controller at Tama Air Base. General Chang had been found, suffering from hypothermia, but he would live. He called Xilong and told him good news.

"Just hold it steady, pilot," Xilong snapped, uncaring about General Chang or anyone else. His entire focus was on the people below.

They have to die!

"Steady, pilot!"

* * *

"Verdamt!" Buchmann bellowed in astonishment, "What is that?"

Talley looked up. The mountain loomed high above them, one of the lower peaks in the Himalayas, yet still thousands of meters above where they lay. At first, he saw nothing, and then it moved like a thin, almost invisible mist. Cold air, a powerful current swirling across the distant peak and several kilometers distant; dropping down toward a rocky outcrop in front of them.

It was like a fine mesh curtain, and against the rugged landscape it was easy to assume it was some kind of an optical illusion. But it was no illusion; the vicious air current ripped part of the snow covering from the mountainside and flung it into the air in its wake. As it drew nearer, the mixture of mist and snow, and even fine debris, chips of stone and wood became a boiling wave of turbulence, like a volcanic eruption. It came nearer and nearer.

Talley stared at the onrushing, physical threat storming toward them, and then shouted, "Take cover! It's about to hit us!"

They threw themselves down and tried to bury down into the cold, clammy depths of snow, almost to the rock that lay beneath. The boiling wave passed over them and struck the helo hovering overhead that was lining up for the killing shot. It plucked the craft from the sky like a child's plastic toy and smashed it down to the snow-covered rock face. The helo slid, further, further, toward the edge of the sloping plateau and the thousand-meter drop to the boulders below waiting to receive it.

As the WZ-10 struck the ground and slid past them, Talley saw the face of the gunner staring out of his Perspex window. The smile had vanished to become a frozen rictus of fear. He seemed to shout something, but whatever it was, it was too late, much too late. Seconds later, the gunship disappeared over the edge.

They were still, disbelieving the miracle of their deliverance. Finally, Talley climbed to his feet. The snowstorm hammered at them, the aftermath of onrushing, chilly tornado. Already, a thick cover hid the evidence, the deep gouges where the gunship had hit the ground and then slid into the precipice. He looked up, but the sky was clear of enemy aircraft; the helo had come alone. They'd been given a chance. If they didn't take advantage of it now, they didn't deserve to escape.

He glanced at Guy who was already on his feet, checking for any casualties. There were more enemies on the mountain than gunships.

"We're going non-stop over the mountain to Nepal. We've had a lucky break, and I doubt we'll get another one." The civilians stared at him from only meters away where they still sheltered in the rocks, "Get on your feet. Help anyone who is not up to walking, and we'll push straight on. All the way."

"It wasn't luck."

He turned to look at Grace Ferraro. She was brushing the snow from her clothing.

"Grace, in this job, you learn to recognize a lucky break when it turns up on your doorstep. This was a lucky break, if ever I saw one. The weather and the altitude worked in our favor. Another time and it may have worked for the enemy."

"Tempa Rinpoche gave us the break," she said quietly, "You saw his sacrifice back there. Now you can see it wasn't in vain."

He stared back at her. "You're not serious? You're trying to tell me that old man getting himself shot to pieces somehow caused that ice storm?" He smiled gently, "Look, I'm real sorry about Tempa. He was a nice old guy, but…"

"What about back at the air base? Where do you think that snowstorm came from? Or do you think it's all coincidence?"

He looked her in the eye. "I'm grateful for any advantage we can get. That includes freaks of weather. But I'm sorry, that's all it is. A freak. Coincidence."

He turned as Guy shouted they were ready to leave. "We have four or five casualties, but there're enough of us to help. Providing we can avoid any freak storms, we have a chance of getting across."

"Roger that. Move out."

They battled to the top of the slope, a steep, slow uphill climb that seemed to take a lifetime. They had to bend into the wind, which was not as powerful as the monstrous surge that brought down the helo, but the gusts were still enough to make every step a hard slogging battle.

They finally crested the top, and although they could see higher peaks in the distance, it was like standing on top of the world. They were over the clouds, and in front of them stretched a magic carpet of scudding drifts of cumulus. He checked his wrist mounted GPS and looked to the southwest, but there was just more cloud.

Then Rovere shouted, "Look, across there. Nepal!"

The clouds had parted, revealing a scattering of villages further down the mountain.

"We made it," Guy exclaimed, "We're almost home."

"Damn right. Keep going, all of you. We're on the last stretch."

Rovere caught up with Talley.

"Some of them are all in. I don't know if they'll make it. We're doing our best to help them along. We could find somewhere for them to shelter while we push on and get a medevac up here."

"And if the Chinese come after us? They'll take them back and execute them."

The Italian nodded. "You're right. I'm too tired to think straight. Shakespeare said, 'fatigue makes cowards of us all', and I reckon he had a point."

"For once, I'd agree with you, Domenico. Keep them moving."

They pressed on, slipping and sliding on the treacherous slopes. But this time, it was downhill as they were already inside the Nepalese border. It wouldn't stop the Chinese pursuing them, but with any luck, they wouldn't yet be aware of the loss of their helo. They passed through the cloud base and reached a lower plateau. They could see Kathmandu in the distance.

Some of the civilians were in a bad way. He detached two of the fittest, fastest men to race forward and get help. Jesse Whitefeather and Guy Welland jogged off toward the city. It was almost an hour and a half before they heard engines coming from the south. Soon, a vehicle appeared in the distance, a Nepalese army truck, and then they could make out another two vehicles, a pair of military ambulances. Brooks grinned.

"Now we really have made it. It's finished."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Not quite."

They both turned to look at Grace.

"What is it?" he asked her.

"Lobsang Cho and Tenzin Davaika, they're are not with us. They stayed behind on the mountaintop."

"They what!"

She eyed him calmly. "They felt they needed to dedicate the remainder of their lives to the Lord Buddha; to beg for his assistance so that the rest of us could escape. It was a very brave and noble thing they did. Those men will be remembered…"

"No! They're not staying behind on my watch. I'm not losing any more people. Buchmann, come with me. We're going back. Domenico, you're in charge. Get them loaded on the transport!"

"Are you sure this is the right thing to do?"

"One hundred percent sure. Just get the rest of them to safety. We'll be back."

He didn't wait for a reply; he just pounded back up the mountain, with Buchmann running alongside. There was no need to navigate. Their footsteps were still clear in the snow, and besides, there was only one way to go. Up. Back to the peak they'd just descended.

After an hour, he could feel his legs beginning to alternate between numbness and aching agony. Buchmann was ahead of him, powering forward like a tracked Caterpillar earthmover. It didn't matter. As long as the German made it and found the two men before it was too late to save them.

He grimaced to himself, these people were beyond him, giving up their lives for some kind of deity he doubted even existed.

Is it possible this craziness could be real? That a supernatural force somehow created the
snowstorm at the air base and the icy tornado that took down the helo? No, of course not. It had to be a coincidence. What else could it be?

He stopped woolgathering and looked ahead for Buchmann, but the German had disappeared in the distance. He ran on slower but determined not to feel the agony in his muscles. Every step took him closer to the two men waiting to die at the top of this peak. He slipped and gashed his leg on a hidden rock, but he didn't stop, couldn't stop. He kept on running, just a flesh and blood machine moving his limbs by willpower alone. It was more of a shamble than a run, and soon he was struggling to keep upright. He was panting, desperate to suck in more of the thin air to supply his sorely depleted muscles with oxygen.

He fell again, and this time his mind reeled. The exertion had sucked the oxygen from his brain as well as from his muscles, and he started to hallucinate. He saw the helo coming toward him, and he recoiled from the gaping maw of the autocannon in the nose. It came closer, and still closer. Then he realized it was organic, a monster set to devour him.

"No! No!" he shouted, screamed, fought with his fists, beating at the monstrous insect, hammering at its bulging eyes, stabbing at the two long tentacles that reached down to suck the life out of him. And then, from faraway, he heard a familiar voice.

"Boss! You're okay. It's Heinrich, you're safe."

"Heinrich?" He calmed himself, managing to focus and saw the huge German trooper standing over him, "My God, I thought it was real."

"It is the air. It does strange things when there is not enough oxygen to breathe."

"Did you find them? Campbell and the monk?"

"I found them. I have the American with me here. I think he may live."

With an effort, Talley pushed himself upright and looked at David Campbell lying huddled in the snow nearby. He could see the man's chest rise and fall. It was slow, very slow, but he was breathing. He was alive.

"Lobsang Cho?"

Buchmann shook his head. "I left him where he was. He was still sitting in the Lotus position, facing toward Tibet. He'd positioned himself in such a way that his body caught the worst of the icy winds. He wouldn't have stood a chance. He'd have frozen to death within minutes."

He nodded. "Let's take a look at Campbell."

He crawled over to the semiconscious figure and put his head close to the other man. His breathing was very shallow, coming in short pants.

"David, can you hear me? Do you know where you are?"

The eyes opened. "I know. Where's Cho?"

"He didn't make it."

He blinked. "He didn't want to. He told me he wanted to go into the next life. We both did."