Rolling Thunder

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.