EndWar

THIRTY-ONE

Major Stephanie Halverson’s eyes had grown so heavy, her muscles so sore, that she staggered to a halt in the middle of the frozen river, leaned forward, and tanked down air.

Ten seconds, she told herself. Just ten seconds.

The wind had picked up and had been blasting snow in her face. Her cheeks and nose were going numb. She shivered and pulled up the scarf, turned back, squinted at the shoreline she’d left behind.

Through veils of snow she made out two Russian BMP-3s rumbling on their tank-like tracks down toward the riverbank.

Her little trek on the snowmobile had helped buy her time, but once she’d switched on the beacon, the Russians had also picked it up. Those infantry squads had probably been tasked with both finding her and performing a reconnaissance mission in this area, killing two birds with one stone, unfortunately.

Reflexes took over. She turned, broke into a run. The opposite shoreline seemed impossibly far away. Her legs were back to burning as she imagined a sniper somewhere behind her casually lining up to take his shot.

At least the end would be quick.

What was she thinking? She wouldn’t give up. Not yet. Not after coming this far. Not after three innocent people had already died!

Screw the pillowcase, the supplies. They dropped into her wake.

She would reach the forest by sheer force of will. They couldn’t stop her.

Anticipating a gunshot, she veered right, then left, still jogging, her boots nearly slipping on the ice beneath the powdery snow.

She glanced back. The Russians were still coming, frozen river notwithstanding. The BMP drivers were testing the ice, while dismounted troops started toward her.

As the snow rose to her shins, her pace slowed, but she swore and kept weaving erratically, kicking forward now. Then, suddenly, a crack made her flinch and gasp.

The gunshot echoed off.

She didn’t feel anything. Maybe he’d missed. Or maybe it’d take a second for the pain to come.

Automatic weapons fire resounded—

But it was joined by the strangely irregular thumping of rotors.

The afternoon sun blinded her for a moment, but out of the glare came a helo swooping toward her.

For a split second her spirits lifted. They’d sent someone. She’d make it.

Then the chopper banked slightly, and she got a better look at the fuselage, the red star, the terrible and familiar outline of a Ka-29. Now those rotors seemed to pound on her head, made her want to scream.

“Oh, yeah?” she cried aloud. “I don’t think so.” She kept on running as the chopper came around once more, descending from behind.

As its shadow passed directly overhead, she extended her arm and fired, the round ricocheting off its hull.

They would land in front of her, cut her off from the forest.

She fired again, smelled fuel, and thought maybe she’d scored a hit.

The helo slowed to a hover, began to pivot, and Halverson wasn’t sure what to do now. Break left? Right?

“She’s firing at us,” hollered Sergeant Scott Rule.

Sergeant Raymond McAllen didn’t need the young superstar to tell him that. But damn, McAllen hadn’t anticipated this part, where the pilot assumed they were Russians about to capture her and decided to shoot at their already malfunctioning helicopter.

They were still hovering, and McAllen ordered the pilot to land, but the Russian shook his head, second chin wagging. “How thick is the ice?”

“It’s thick. Land!”

“I don’t like this ice.”

“Khaki, can you land this thing?”

“Okay, I put down,” said the pilot with disgust. “But if ice breaks, your fault!” He leaned forward and spoke rapidly into his microphone.

“Damn it!” Khaki jolted forward and switched off the unit.

McAllen shoved his pistol into the back of the pilot’s head. “Put this bird down!”

Then he called out to Rule, telling him to open the bay door and throw down one of his Velcro patches, the American flag.

All their uniform patches and other black insignia could be removed via the Velcro, depending upon the mission and what the lawyers had to say about operations in a particular nation. Sometimes you had to show the patches, sometimes not.

Rule slid open the door, and as they got even lower he tossed down the patch, then started closing the door, just as she fired again, the round pinging off the jam.

Rule cursed and fell back onto the floor.

“Is he hit?” asked McAllen.

“I don’t think so,” shouted Gutierrez.

“Look, she’s got it,” said Khaki. “She sees us! She knows. Here she comes.”

Halverson thought she was dreaming as she ran toward the helicopter, its gear just setting down on the ice. She clutched the patch in her hand and broke into a full-on sprint.

For a moment she had doubted the patch, thought maybe the enemy was luring her into the helo, but that was thinking too hard. If there were Russians on board, they would rather take her by force, not cunning. It would be a matter of ego. This was her rescue.

The gunfire behind her had ceased. Those fools thought their comrades in the helo had captured the “Yankee pilot.” They had no idea that somehow, some way, Americans had taken control of an enemy helicopter. She had almost waved after picking up the patch but thought better of it. The troops behind would find that highly suspect.

With the rotors now blowing waves of snow into her eyes and clearing a circle around the helo, Halverson leaned over, ditched the survival kit, and made her last run for it, coming onto the rotor-swept ice.

Just twenty yards now, and her gait grew shaky as her boots found little traction. It was all she could do to remain upright.

Boom, down she went. Took a hard fall. Right on her butt. The impact sent tremors of pain through her back.

Get up!

The helo’s side door slid open, and a helmeted soldier was waving her on.

She rose. Gunfire began pinging off the chopper. Damn it. The Russians had figured it out.

Okay, back on her feet now. A few rounds sparking here and there.

Ten yards. Five. That soldier was right there, his face obscured by a visor.

Abruptly, the helo tipped slightly away from her, rotors lifting back—

Then she saw what was happening. The ice below had cracked, and the helo’s gear was sinking into the water, chunks of ice already bobbing around it.

But the cracks were on the back side of the helicopter, so Halverson kept on running. Just fifteen feet now. Ten. Five.

The soldier’s mouth was working: come on!

Halverson increased her stride.

The soldier leaned out as far as he could, extending his gloved hand.

What was that sound? Oh, no… The ice began splintering at her feet.

She took three more steps, heard a chorus of cracking sounds, then she began to slip and tried shifting to the right—

Only to find herself atop a small raft of ice that floated freely, her weight driving one side down.

Instinctively, she reached out. Nothing to grab on to, no one to help. She began to fall.

Oh, God, no…

The water rushed up her legs, over her chest, and broke over her face, the sensation like a billion fingernails of ice poking every part of her body.

Completely underwater now, the shock having robbed her entirely of breath, she panicked and kicked frantically for the surface.

Only then did the extreme cold hit her.

In truth the water was probably not colder than what she’d experienced during water immersion tests during her training, but combined with the stress of the moment, the stress of the past night, it was liquid death.

Her head hit something hard. More ice. She pushed up, tried to find an opening.

Where was the surface?

She made a fist, punched the ice, looked around, punched again.

Rule had already yanked the quick straps on his boots, toed them off, and had zipped off his combat suit, leaving him in his black LWCWUS (lightweight cold weather undergarment set) and socks.

No way would they let that pilot drown.

Rule would die first.

Friskis had already found a nylon rescue rope, and Rule made a loop in it as the chopper began to rise from the river.

With the looped rope in one hand, he jumped out, dropping six feet toward the broken ice. Before he even felt the water, he screamed at it like an animal raging against nature.

Just as he broke through, about to be swallowed, the rattling of the helo’s machine gun sounded against the rotors.

That’s right, boys, let ’em have it!

Rule sank deep, popped up, and cried out again as the chill seized him in its grasp. He told himself, not so cold, not so cold, as he swam forward, didn’t see her, dove under, widened his eyes—

And there she was, just off to his left, a few feet back and struggling to push through the ice, unable to see the opening nearby.

He paddled to her, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her back with him, kicking as hard as he could.

They burst up, both tanking down air, gasping, the rotor wash whipping over them. “Grab on to my back!”

She wrapped one arm over his right shoulder, tucked the other arm beneath his left, and locked her hands. Smart girl. “I’m ready,” she said through her intense shivering.

There wasn’t time to ascend the rope and climb back into the helo — not with that incoming fire.

So Rule flashed a thumbs-up, seized the loop with both hands, and braced himself.

From the open door, McAllen gave the Russian pilot the go-ahead, and the rope snapped taut. Rule and the woman were wrenched from the water and swung hard under the chopper.

“Go, go, go,” McAllen cried over the intercom.

The helo’s nose pitched down, and they veered off, still drawing fire from the infantrymen behind them.

One of the BMP-3s even fired a round from its big gun but missed by a wide margin. The Russians were at once desperate, embarrassed, and mighty pissed off.

“This is it,” said Khaki. “We’re on fumes now.”

“Just get us to the other side of this forest and put us down there. We have to get them inside.”

McAllen wished they could turn back for just a moment and launch rockets, but not with Rule and the pilot dangling below.

“Hang on, buddy, just hang on!” shouted Palladino, even though the sergeant below couldn’t hear him.

They all began shouting, and maybe it made them feel better, McAllen wasn’t sure, but he joined in and remembered the conversation he’d had with his young assistant:

“Just want you to know that I’m giving you a hundred and ten percent. Always,” Rule had said.

“We’ll see how long it takes for you to create your own shadow. And I hope it’s a pretty long one.”

Yes, indeed, Sergeant Scott Rule had just cast a very long shadow. And McAllen would make sure to commend him for that.

Rule’s arms were frozen, his hands locked onto the rope. The pilot was tugging hard on his shoulders, and tears were beginning to form in his eyes from all the exertion.

“Don’t… let go…” she said in his ear.

She was half dead, but even then she sounded kind of sexy. Leave it to him to be thinking of sex at a time like this…

He closed his eyes.

I am a Marine. This is my job. I will not fail.

But the feeling had escaped from his arms, and the rope began sliding through his fingers.

“He’s losing it!” shouted McAllen. “Khaki, how much longer?”

“We’re almost there!”

McAllen began stripping out of his combat suit so he could give it to the pilot, once they had her inside. The suit’s life critical layer had a narrow network of tubing that would provide one hundred watts of heating A-SAP. Rule’s suit waited for him.

Talk about being hung out to dry. McAllen couldn’t imagine how cold those two must be.

The helo broke past another long stretch of trees, then the engine stuttered like a misfiring lawnmower.

“No choice now,” said Khaki.

“Try to put them down easy,” McAllen said.

“Easy is not possible,” grunted the pilot. “Maybe you pray now. Because we go down hard!”

He wasn’t kidding. The chopper began dropping like a rock as she lost power.

McAllen clung to the back of the pilot’s seat, watched as Rule, who was one-handing the rope now, slammed into a snow bank.

“They’re down!” he shouted. “But he’s still holding the rope. He’s not letting go! Cut it! Cut it!”

Gutierrez immediately unsheathed his Blackhawk Tatang, a thirteen-inch-long serrated blade that he lifted high in the air, then—

Thump! He cut nylon like butter, leaving a deep scar on the helo’s deck.

“They’re clear!” cried McAllen.

“Everybody, brace for impact!” warned Khaki. “Three, two, one!”