Ralph Peters (81 page)

The machine crashed through the forest, splintering tall
conifers. The armored sides and underbelly screamed
as
the M-100 scraped through the boughs. The ship
bucked badly,
tilting over on its side. Meredith could
hear
the sound of man-made materials wrenching apart in the last instant before the fuselage slammed into the ground,
and h
e thought of Taylor. His wife, his parents
—
they all deserved
him now.
Only Taylor remained. With his ruined face and haunted eyes. Taylor wanted him to live.

What was left of the ship ploughed into a snow field amid the trees and came to rest on its side.

To
his astonishment,
Meredith found that h
e
was still alive. The slash wound on his neck had
torn open
again
from the strain, and his spine and joints felt as
though he h
ad made a very bad parachute landing.
But
his seat
harnes
s still held him in place And
he
was
unmistakably, incredibly, deliciously alive.

"
Sonofabitch,
"
Krebs said with spectacular emphasis.
"
That's it. I've had it. I'm going to retire.
"

"
You all
right, Chief?
"
Meredith asked. He could hear his own voice shaking.

"
Sonofabitch,
"
the warrant officer repeated.
His voice, t
oo, had begun to tremble.

Meredith moved to try the intercom.
But the mike had been torn
from his headset in
the crash. In any case, all
of
the
electronic systems
appeared to be utterly inert
.

He
tested his limbs, then carefully undid his safety
har
ness, lowering himself until his feet caught
the edge
of
the c
opilot's seat. The M-l00 had settled almost perfectly at ninety degrees, its right wing and rotor torn away.
Awk
ward and stiff
,
Meredith clambered back through the passageway that led to the ops compartment, crawling in a sideward world, under the surreal glow of the
emergency lights.

Parker
and
Ryder were both bloody and unconscious. The ops-and-intel NCO was awake but
dazed,
the
lower h
alf of his face covered
in
blood. At the sight of Meredith, the NCO's eyes gave
a fl
icker of recognition, but he
imme
diately sank back into himself.

Parker was in the worst shape. The seats in the ops cell had safety belts, but the overall ergonomics
were
not
nearly as developed as the cockpit seats. Parker's chair
had ripped free of its pedestal, throwing him forward-His arm was badly twisted and there was blood seeping through his uniform sleeve where an unnatural jut against the doth announced a compound fracture. His face was misshapen on one side, and it appeared as though both the jaw and cheekbone might have been broken Parker snored blood out of his nose and mouth.

Ryder came to. The young warrant officer was bruised and stiff, but far luckier than the others. Hardly a minute after waking, he was moving tentatively about the cabin, trying to assist Meredith.

"
What happened?
"
Ryder asked.

"
We crashed.
"

Ryder thought for a moment
.
It was evident that his head was not yet completely dear
"
We in
Turkey?
"

"
No. Somewhere in Armenia. Indian
country."

"
Oh.
"
The younger man thought for a moment.
"
So what do we do now?
"

Parker groaned. Meredith had repositioned him for maximum comfort. But he had not yet managed to scavenge material for a splint, Shock, too, might be a problem.

Parker groaned again
.
It was the noise of a man waking after an ungodly drunk.

"
First.
"
Meredith said,
"
we zero out all of the electronics, Then we collect whatever we can carry and use. Then we rig the grenades in here and in the cockpit
.
Then we start walking.
"

Krebs slipped into the compartment from the canted passageway. His face looked deadly serious.

"
Major,
"
he said,
"
we got company.
"

Working frantically, the men wiped out the codes on the electronics that had not been destroyed in the crash Krebs rigged a splint for Parker's arm with the same casual dexterity he displayed working on an engine or a control panel. Parker had an ever greater perception of the pain he was undergoing, and he bobbed just above and below the surface of consciousness Working together. Meredith, Krebs, Ryder, and the NCO, who had largely regained his senses, carefully lowered Parker out into the snow
.
Parker came up from his dreams just long enough to say:

"
You can leave me, guys. Don't let me hold you up. You can leave me.
"

And he swooned back into his pain.

Their visitors could not see them at the rear of the M-100. Only the machine's snout and cockpit protruded from the treeline, and the dense evergreens offered good concealment with their impenetrable blankets of snow. But every man waited for the sound of movement in the deep snow. Or of gunfire.

Krebs had spotted the first intruders through the windscreen: men in ragtag winter clothing, but heavily armed. In the moments before he crawled back to inform Meredith, the old warrant had watched the entire visible rim of the little valley fill with armed men.

It was very cold outside of the shelter of the M-100.

"
They make any gestures?
"
Meredith asked.
"
Did it seem like they were looking for trouble?
"

Krebs threw him a bitter laugh.
"
I'm not sure we're in a position to be much trouble to
them
,
"
he said.
"
Anyway, they were just standing there. Probably trying to figure out who the dumb shits were who just crashed their asses out in the middle of nowhere.
"

Meredith nodded.
"
I'm going to blow the cockpit and the ops cabin.
"

Krebs shook his head, as if in sorrow.

"
Won't they, like, think it's a hostile act or something?
"
Ryder asked.

Meredith answered him as honestly as he could.
"
Probably. But we don't have any choice. This baby's loaded with top secret gear.
"
He shivered with the sharp mountain cold.
"
All I can do at this point is toss in a couple of grenades. Before these characters, whoever they are, start closing in. It may not do a hell of a lot of good. But we've got to do everything we can to make it hard for the enemy's technical intelligence boys.
"

Krebs raised his head sharply.

Meredith followed the turn of the old warrant's attention.

"
You hear something, Flapper?
"

"
I
don't
know,
"
Krebs whispered.

Parker moaned.

"
What the hell,
"
Meredith said. And he pulled himself back
up
into the belly of the M-100.
"
Get your asses over behind
those
fallen trees,
"
he ordered. And his boots disappeared.

He
had to stand on a monitor worth several million dollars to reach the compartment where the extra ammunition was stored. Despite the fact that he was about to do his best to blow the furnishings of the cabin to hell, he still felt awkward planting his boots on the state-of-the-art equipment.

Boxes of ammunition came crashing down, starting his work for him. He had to duck out of the way.

He retrieved the box of high explosive grenades from the fallen clutter, ripping open the top of what resembled a very special egg carton. He filled the blousy lower pockets of his tunic.

He didn't waste any time. Popping his head into the cockpit, he could just make out the line of armed men up on the valley's rim. There were hundreds of them now. Standing in a dark, still line.

He primed two grenades, tossed them at the control panel and scrambled back to the ops cell, banging his knees and elbows without caring a damn. He just managed to slam shut the compartment door when the twin blasts blew it open again. But the door had absorbed most of the force, and except for a huge ringing in his ears, Meredith was untouched.

Smoke.

Meredith scrambled out through the hatch. As soon as his boots hit the snow, he primed three grenades in succession, lobbing them forward into the ops compartment. Then he flattened himself on the ground along the armored side of the M-100.

The machine's belly shook and groaned under the blasts. But the armor and insulation contained the power. The design was so good that there were not even any secondary explosions from the stored ammunition. The machine had been far more reliable than its human masters. And that, Meredith figured, was that.

He hustled over to the remainder of the crew. Krebs and the NCO were rigging a litter for Parker, stripping down branches the M-100 had sheared off during its crash. Ryder knelt behind a fluff of evergreen boughs, on guard.

Krebs looked up.
"
I don't figure those guys just went away, by any chance?
"

Meredith shook his head.

"
Why don't they come for us?
"
Ryder asked nervously.
"
Why don't they make a move?
"

Meredith did not know. They had crossed into a world where the best analysts found their knowledge to be spotty. Behavior and allegiances did not fit the sensible, predictable patterns that gave bureaucrats a chance to get their forecasts right. There were countless armed factions in Armenia, representing indigenous nationalists, occupiers, sectarian Moslems, obscure irredentists, and splinter groups more closely aligned with a particular family or valley than with any coherent platform. The only thing of which Meredith was reasonably certain was that the men who lined the valley's rim were not Islamic Union forces, since they would have been in uniform.

What would Taylor have done in such a situation? Meredith wondered. Would the old man have made one last valiant stand? That sounded like the obvious thing, but Meredith didn't really think so. Taylor always found a way out of spots like this—really, this was minor stuff, by the old man's standards. He remembered Taylor in Mexico, bluffing his way through situations where the odds were impossibly against him.

"
I'm going out there,
"
Meredith said suddenly.
"
I'm going to try to talk to them. There's a good chance they speak some Russian.
"

Krebs looked at him sadly, without any of his usual
"
grizzled old warrant
"
banter. The NCO simply carried on with the construction of the litter. And Parker's eyes wandered ineffectually from one man to the other, propelled by misery.

Unexpectedly, Ryder spoke up.
"
I'll go with you, sir. You shouldn't go out there alone.
"

"
It isn't necessary,
"
Meredith said.

"
I
want
to go,
"
Ryder said adamantly. But he looked frightened.

Meredith shrugged. It was an hour for every man to make his own decisions. Anyway, it might be better to have a white face out there beside his own. There was no telling how these partisans or whatever they were might react.

Suddenly Parker arched from the bed of evergreen boughs where his comrades had laid him while they prepared the litter. There were beads of sweat on his forehead, and his eyes looked through Meredith.

"
Get the colonel, get the colonel,
"
he cried.
"
We've got to go back for the colonel.
"