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A power generator grumbled to life inside the pod and moments later Cordero emerged. He lent Manning and Hawkins a hand with the last few couplers, then moved back and reached out to take the tarp from McCarter.
“You should be able to take off now,” he said. “Once you’re clear, we’ll get your man into surgery and do what we can for him.”
“Good.” McCarter turned to Manning and Hawkins. “Come with me,” he told the big Canadian. “T.J., stay here and keep an eye on things.”
“Got it,” Hawkins said.
McCarter and Manning quickly boarded the Sikorsky. Cordero tossed aside the canvas, then grabbed hold of one end of James’s stretcher. Hawkins took the other.
“Move him very slowly,” Tatis told him, stepping back to give them room.
The Skycrane’s engines soon drowned out the generator and buffeted the meadow with its rotor wash. The detached OR pod rattled in place slightly as the chopper lifted off. Cordero and Hawkins waited until McCarter had guided the Sikorsky away from the pod before lifting James and hauling him into the portable chamber. The medic was right behind him. Inside, there was an OR table already set up in one corner. Even as Cordero and Hawkins were transferring James from the stretcher, Tatis was probing the wounded man’s arm for a vein to tap into with an IV line.
“What is his blood type?” he asked Hawkins.
Hawkins told him. “Are there any units here?”
Tatis shook his head. “No. And he is going to need at least a couple units.”
“Can’t help,” Hawkins said. “He’s not my type.”
“I’m a match,” Cordero said, rolling up his left sleeve. “You can start with me.”
The unit’s other medic arrived moments later; he and the boy were carrying the stretcher bearing the older shepherd.
“It’s too crowded in here.” Tatis turned to Hawkins. “Take the boy out with you. Try to find one of our men, tall with a scar down his right cheek. His name is Umiel. Tell him we need him.”
“He’s got the right blood?” Hawkins said.
“Yes,” Tatis confirmed. “Now, go…”
“What about my papa?” the boy asked.
“He will be fine,” the medic assured him. “We will give him antibiotics and fluids and he will be fine.”
The boy seem unconvinced, but when Hawkins put a hand on his shoulder, he grudgingly kissed his father on the forehead and then followed T.J. out of the pod.
“He’ll be okay,” Hawkins assured the boy. “Keep the faith.”
The boy frowned and looked up at Hawkins. “What does that mean?”
“It means you have to believe things are going to work out.” Hawkins glanced northward, looking for the Sikorsky. The chopper had cleared the mountains, however, and dropped out of sight. He turned his gaze back at the OR pod a moment, then told the boy, “Sometimes keeping the faith is all you can do.”
After searching the meadow and the area around the chestnut trees, Hawkins spotted Umiel halfway up the mountain-side behind the rock hut. He and another soldier had dragged four bodies from the rocks and lined them face-up, side by side, on a level patch of ground. As Hawkins and the shepherd boy approached, the two soldiers finished photographing the dead men’s faces, then set the camera aside and drew Kolvan fighting knives from sheaths strapped to their thighs. With studied nonchalance, the men began slicing off the ears of the fallen ETA warriors.
“Hey!” Hawkins shouted, rushing forward. Once he caught up with the soldiers, he grabbed Umiel by the collar and jerked him away from the bodies. Umiel staggered, off balance, then fell to the ground, dropping his knife. Hawkins grabbed it, then glared at Umiel and the other soldier, who’d momentarily stopped his grisly handiwork. When the boy caught up with Hawkins, he took one look at the butchered corpses and turned away.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Hawkins demanded.
Umiel didn’t understand what Hawkins was saying, but the other man knew a little English and replied, “It is something we learned from the Ertzainta. We take pictures, then check files and find their families. We send ears along with pictures to show what happens if you join BLM.”
“I don’t know who the Ertzainta is,” Hawkins said, “but this is bullshit!”
“The Ertzainta are rogue police,” the other man said. “A death squad that puts more fear into these separatists than we’re allowed to. We will give them credit for this.”
Hawkins stared at the severed ears with disgust, then turned back to the soldiers. “And you don’t think that makes them just more determined to keep fighting you?”
The officer smiled menacingly. “If they fight back, we let the Ertzainta come in and kill someone in their family. Soon they will understand we mean business.”
This wasn’t the first time Hawkins had heard of such tactics used in counterterrorism circles, and there was a part of him that understood the gruesome logic. Still, he couldn’t condone the butchery. It was one thing to gun a man down because he was the enemy. Carving him up for souvenirs, regardless of one’s rationale, went against everything he’d been taught growing up in a military family with a tradition for valor in the battlefield. This was wrong, and he wasn’t about to stand by and watch it happen.
“Sergeant Tatis wants you back at the OR,” he told Umiel. Stretching the truth, he turned to the other soldier, as well. “Both of you.”
“When we finish,” the other soldier said. He was about to slit the ear off another of the dead men when Hawkins yanked out his pistol and thumbed off the safety. The soldier hesitated with his knife and glanced up, finding Hawkins’s gun aimed at his head.
“Now,” Hawkins said.
The soldier hesitated, glaring at Hawkins.
“Americans,” he snapped, spitting at the ground. “Always big shots.”
Before Hawkins could respond, he detected a blur of motion to his right. Umiel was lunging toward him, scooping up a handful of gravel. Hawkins reflexively threw his forearm before his face, deflecting the stones as they came hailing toward him. Umiel reached him before he could fire his gun, however, and the two men tumbled to the ground.
The other soldier was about to join the fray when a rock suddenly glanced off his forehead. He dropped to his knees, stunned. Before he could recover his senses, the shepherd boy rushed forward and shoved him in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground. The boy then rushed over to the bodies of the slain Basques and grabbed one of their subguns. He turned it on the Spaniard and fired a blast into the dirt a few feet in front of him, then raised the barrel, pointing it at the man’s chest.
By then, Hawkins had managed to overpower Umiel, pinning his arm behind him in a full Nelson. As he wrestled the man to his feet, he grinned at the shepherd boy and told him, “Something tells me your father taught you a few things besides how to tend sheep.”
The boy grinned back. “He taught me to always be prepared,” he said, adding, “That way, it is easy to keep the faith.”
CHAPTER SIX
“There he is!” Manning shouted, pointing at the gorge he and McCarter were flying over in the Sikorsky Skycrane.
McCarter glanced down and spotted the terrorists’ ATV, still tilting precariously at the edge of the drop-off where it had come to a stop earlier. Encizo remained trapped in the front seat, shouldering the large wooden crate to keep it from sliding forward any farther. The driver hadn’t yet regained consciousness and continued to lie sprawled next to the Cuban, who glanced up and waved faintly with one hand once he spotted the chopper.
“This could get tricky,” McCarter said, holding the Sikorsky stable in midair. “If we go down to try to help, the rotor wash is liable to push him over the edge.”
“I think you’re right,” Manning said. “We’ve got to do something, though.”
McCarter shifted his gaze to the route the ATV had taken once it had left the trail. When he spotted a half-fallen, lightning-charred pine tree twenty yards uphill from Encizo’s position, he thought he might have stumbled on the solution.
“Check and see if there’s any rope around here,” he told Manning.
“What for?”
“Just do it!” McCarter snapped.
“Since you asked so nicely,” Manning said with a grin.
The big Canadian swiveled his seat around and snapped open a large footlocker mounted over the rear windshield. The locker was filled mostly with tools and emergency gear, but there was also a large spool of heavy link chain. Manning grunted as he hoisted the spool free.
“Will this do?” he asked McCarter.
“That might work even better. How much do you think is there?”
Manning tried to gauge the length of the chain without unwinding it from the spool. “I don’t know, ten yards. Maybe twenty.”
“Let’s give it a shot,” McCarter said. He jockeyed the controls, pulling the Sikorsky away from Encizo’s position. As he dropped toward the far side of the charred pine, he spelled out his plan. “I’ll get you as close to the ground as I can so you can hop down and hook the chain up to the crane hook. Then run a line under that pine and find a way to secure it to the ATV.”
“So you can winch it,” Manning guessed. “Good idea.”
“That’s why they put me in charge instead of you.”
Manning let out a snort. “And here I thought it was your charm.”
“That, too,” the Briton replied. “Now hop to it.”
“Yes, sir!”
McCarter brought the Sikorsky to within ten feet of a reasonably flat escarpment. The rotor wash raised a cloud of leaves and pine needles, revealing the bare rock Manning would have to land on. The big Canadian manipulated the boom’s remote controls, releasing the winch hook mounted under the fuselage. Once he’d unwound six yards of cable, he locked the winch in place and swung his door open.
“Wait for a thumbs-up,” he told McCarter.
McCarter nodded. “Good luck.”
Manning stepped out onto the cockpit ladder and lowered himself to the last rung, then reached out and let the chain spool drop with a loud clatter onto the escarpment. Once McCarter had lowered the Sikorsky another couple feet, Manning pushed free and dropped to the ground a few feet from the spool. He grimaced as a flash of pain raced up both legs, but there was no time to dwell on his discomfort. He quickly affixed one end of the chain to the winch hook, then limped faintly as he made his way to the toppled pine, feeding out the length of chain behind him. He was rolling the spool under the pine when Encizo called out to him.
“That you, Gary?”
“Stay put,” Manning called back. From where he was standing, the tethered crate blocked his view of Encizo.
“Don’t have much choice.”
“We’re going to tug you back to solid ground.” Manning quickly relayed the plan as he continued to unroll the spool. He was halfway to the ATV when he ran out of chain. Staring up at the Sikorsky, which was still hovering in position above the charred pine, he signaled for McCarter to feed out more cable.
As he was waiting, Manning detected a glint of refracted light to his right. He looked over his shoulder and traced the glint to a mountain ridge a hundred yards away. As quickly as it had appeared, the flash disappeared.
“Anyone else in these hills that you know about?” he called out to Encizo.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Encizo called back. “Why?”
“I think I caught some light bouncing off a pair of binocs,” Manning said.
“Maybe it’s reinforcements,” Encizo replied. “Wasn’t the militia supposed to be on its way up here?”
“Yeah,” Manning said, “but they were coming the other way.”
“We better get the show on the road, then,” Encizo said. “Last thing we need is another warm BLM welcome.”
By now McCarter had let out another twenty yards of cable. Manning tugged at the spool, pulling the chain until he’d reached the ATV. There was no trailer jack and he doubted the rear bumper would hold up, so he dropped flat against the ground and reached under the vehicle, knotting the chain to the chassis. Doing so, he nudged the ATV slightly and it groaned, inching farther over the edge of the precipice. One of the rear tires began to rise off the ground.
“Shit!”
Manning quickly scrambled out from under the vehicle and grabbed at the bumper, pressing down with his full weight.
“Push the crate back!” he shouted to Encizo.
“I don’t know about—”
“Push it back!” Manning repeated.
Manning shifted his weight and began pulling at the bumper. He was in no position to signal for McCarter to start reeling the ATV in, but the Sikorsky nonetheless began to move upward, taking in the chain’s slack. It was going to be close; Manning could feel the ATV slipping forward, pulling him toward the precipice.
“Faster, David!” he muttered, gritting his teeth as he pulled harder on the bumper. He felt his hamstrings and lower back straining from the effort but he refused to let up.
Encizo, meanwhile, had thrown caution to the wind and crawled up out of the driver’s seat and begun to scramble across the top of the crate, trying to rebalance the ATV’s load so it wouldn’t go over the side. Manning stared up at him, his face red, the veins in his neck bulging from his exertion.
“I think we’re gonna make it,” Encizo said. Now that he’d moved from the front to the rear of the ATV, both the vehicle’s rear wheels were back on the ground and it had stopped its forward slide. Moments later, the ATV jerked back a few inches from the precipice. McCarter had taken up all the chain’s slack and was now starting to pull the vehicle from the brink of the abyss.
“Almost there,” Encizo murmured, preparing to jump to the ground once all four wheels were back on firm ground.
Suddenly a muffled blast echoed from up in the hills, followed seconds later by a larger explosion, this one in the air just above the toppled pine. Manning and Encizo looked up simultaneously.
“David!” Encizo cried out.
A mortar shot had just struck the Skycrane’s tail rotor. Destabilized, the chopper had begun to spin around eerily as it dropped toward the ground, taking McCarter down with it.
MCCARTER HAD NO TIME to react. Not that he could have done anything to prevent the Skycrane from crashing. One second he was lurching to one side from the force of the explosion; the next he found the ground rushing up to greet him. All that saved him from being killed on impact was the Sikorsky’s manic air dance; just before striking the pines, it had pirouetted and tilted upward so that the damaged tail section touched down first. When the front end followed suit, the branches of the charred pine helped cushion the landing. Still, the impact was jarring enough to throw McCarter against the front windshield. The glass cracked but held in place as he bounded back into his seat, dazed, blood streaming down his face from a scalp gash.
The Sikorsky had come to rest at an odd angle, tilting slightly upward and sideways just enough to throw off McCarter’s equilibrium. When he tried to stand, his head began to spin. He grabbed for the copilot’s seat to steady himself, but his legs gave out underneath him and he keeled forward, dropping the carbine and toppling to the cockpit’s floor. He struck his head again, this time against the instrument panel. The blow was forceful enough to render him unconscious. The last thing he recalled was the smell of leaking engine fuel.
MANNING STARTED to rush toward the fallen chopper, but his strained hamstrings refused to cooperate, slowing him to a quick hobble. Compounding matters, the ground around him came to life as a stream of gunfire chewed at the dirt and the now-slack length of chain reaching from the ATV to the charred pine. Driven back, he took shelter behind the ATV, kneeling beside Encizo, who’d already retrieved the driver’s Uzi subgun.
“Bastards,” Encizo growled. “Some of them must’ve veered off before they reached the meadow.”
“That or they’ve got a camp around here somewhere,” Manning speculated. He ignored the fiery sensation in his legs and drew his 15-round M-9 Beretta from its shoulder holster. He could no longer see the downed Skycrane, but he could smell smoke and the rank odor of fuel.
“We need to get David out of that chopper before it blows,” he told Encizo, speaking above the gunfire.
“I know,” Encizo said, “but how? They’ve got us pinned down.”
“What about the jalopy?”
“After what it’s been through, I doubt it’s running,” Encizo said, “but let’s give it a—”
Encizo pitched forward, suddenly attacked from behind. The vehicle’s driver had regained consciousness and sprang forward from the front seat armed with a combat knife. The blade bit sharply into Encizo’s shoulder as the Basque knocked him to the ground.
The Basque quickly pulled the knife free and was about to stab Encizo a second time when Manning intervened, instinctively lashing out with the butt of his pistol. He caught the other man just below the right cheekbone, breaking a few teeth. Stunned, the man dropped his knife and his eyes began to roll up inside his head. Before he could collapse on top of Encizo, Manning grabbed hold of him and jerked him back to his feet with so much force the driver reeled backward. He was still trying to catch his balance when he ran out of ground and vanished as quickly as if a trapdoor had just opened under his feet.
