Rolling Thunder

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.