Rolling Thunder

CHAPTER THREE

Encizo was concerned by all the gunfire that had taken place after James had disappeared behind the stone hut, but he was in no position to investigate. The gunmen stationed behind the parked ATV had him pinned down in the middle of the pasture. He fed another grenade into his M-14’s launcher as bullets caromed off the boulders he crouched behind. Encizo figured a well-placed shot could take out the gunmen, but he couldn’t run the risk of blowing up the crate still tethered to the vehicle. He had to try another way.

He waited for a lull in the shooting, then took aim at the stand of chestnut trees to the left of the ATV.

“Get ready to wrap this up!” he shouted out to Hawkins, who was still lying prone at the edge of the nearby ditch.

“Go for it!” Hawkins shouted back, rising to a crouch.

Encizo triggered the launcher. The M-14’s stock bucked sharply against his shoulder as it sent a 40 mm grenade hurtling toward the trees. Encizo’s aim couldn’t have been better. The grenade detonated as it struck the base of one of the trees, obliterating most of the trunk.

With a wrenching snap nearly as loud as the explosion itself, the tall chestnut teetered to one side, then came crashing down, its upper branches slapping across the top of the ATV. By then, Encizo and Hawkins were both on their feet and charging through the meadow.

The ploy worked, flushing the enemy from the ATV. Once Encizo reached another crop of boulders, he dropped to one knee and blasted away with his carbine. Two men dropped from view into the tall grass. Judging from the way they’d gone down, Enzico doubted they’d be getting back up. Hawkins had similar luck, firing through the branches of the fallen tree and nailing a gunman seeking out cover behind the shattered trunk.

As Hawkins continued to race toward the chestnuts, however, he was nearly broadsided by a stream of gunfire coming down from the mountains to his right. He dived to the ground and rolled to one side until he reached one of the sheep, which had been caught up in the cross fire and lay dead in the grass. Peering over the carcass, Hawkins spotted two snipers up in the foothills near the rocks where Encizo had fired earlier. He trained his sights on the man who presented the best target. It took three shots, but he finally managed to send a killshot through the man’s skull. The other gunman returned fire, missing Hawkins by inches with one shot and stirring the dead sheep with another.

“Got a stray to take care of!” Hawkins called over his shoulder to Encizo. “I’ll take him out, then circle around!”

Encizo nodded. He stayed put a moment, eyes on the fallen tree, waiting for another separatist to show himself. None appeared. He stole a quick glance at the stone hut but could still see no sign of James or the shepherd boy. He was about to go have a closer look when he heard the sound of the ATV’s engine revving to life. Shifting his gaze, he saw that one of the Basques had climbed into the driver’s seat and was brushing away the branches draped across the steering wheel. Once he’d shifted gears, the man began to back the ATV up, pulling away from the fallen tree.

“Not so fast,” Encizo muttered.

He quickly fired off a few rounds, managing to hit the vehicle’s framework but not the driver. The ATV separated itself from the tree and began to turn. Encizo realized the driver was hoping to retreat the way he’d come. Cursing, he broke from cover and began to sprint after the vehicle. His carbine was slowing him, so he cast it aside. Without breaking stride, he yanked the 9 mm pistol from his web holster. There was no point in firing, however; the crate blocked his view of the driver.

By the time Encizo reached the fallen tree, the ATV had left the meadow and begun to head down a narrow dirt path that threaded its way between outcroppings and a scattering of tall mountain pines. After a couple turns the vehicle had disappeared from view.

Rather than take the trail, Encizo bounded onto the closest outcropping and followed it, leaping from rock to rock, hoping he wouldn’t lose his footing. He could still hear the ATV and tried his best to head in the same direction. Behind him, he could hear intermittent gunfire back in the meadow and figured Hawkins still had his hands full.

After sixty yards, Encizo was forced to come to a stop. The outcropping had not only narrowed to a point, but it had also come to an abrupt end, leaving him poised at the edge of a sheer, forty-foot precipice.

Another stream of expletives spilled from Encizo’s lips as he sized up his situation. He had two options: he could either backtrack the way he’d come or try to make his way down the sheer face of the cliff. In terms of catching up with the ATV, either way seemed futile. He could no longer even hear the vehicle, much less see it. Like it or not, it looked as if the enemy had gotten away.

“Way to go, Rafe,” he chastised himself.

Encizo was still deliberating his next move when he heard a rustling behind him. He whirled and saw that a mountain goat had appeared atop the outcropping twenty yards behind him. He wasn’t sure how it’d gotten there, but Encizo had a feeling the animal wasn’t about to let him pass. The goat, a full-grown male weighing more than two hundred pounds, stared intently at Encizo, then lowered its head slightly, tipping its horns forward.

“I don’t think that’s a good sign,” Encizo whispered to himself. He was inching closer to the edge of the precipice when the goat suddenly lunged forward, lowering its head still further.

Just as quickly, Encizo lowered himself over the side, seeking out the first available niches and protuberances for support. He’d make it a few yards down when the goat appeared at the edge of the precipice and stared down at him. Encizo stared back momentarily, then glanced over his shoulder, watching a handful of loose stones clatter down the side of the cliff before crashing against the hardpan below.

“Not good,” Encizo muttered. “Not good…”

“HELL, I FEEL like I’m trying to fly that damn supertank,” David McCarter groused.

“It’s no Cobra, that’s for sure,” Gary Manning conceded.

When the two men had landed at the airstrip two miles from where they’d jettisoned their teammates, they’d discovered that the two promised Cobra gunships had been deployed elsewhere. In their place, McCarter had found himself at the controls of a Sikorsky CH-54S Tarhe. Better known as the S-64 Skycrane, the Sikorsky was a forty-year-old hand-me-down that had first seen service in the early years of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. In fact, beneath its sun-faded layers of paint, the Skycrane still bore the insignia of the U.S. 478th Aviation Company. One of the largest helicopters ever built, the S-64 was an unarmed workhorse, designed primarily for lifting of up to ten tons of cargo: anything from 155 mm howitzers to the 4536 kg long-fuse bombs used create instant LZs in the Vietcong heartland. In this case, the chopper’s tailboom was rigged with a service pod containing a surgical operations facility. Also riding in the pod were six well-armed members, not of the militia—which was on its way up into mountains by foot and Jeep—but rather Spain’s special forces. Weighed down with such a heavy load, the chopper lumbered slowly through the air.

Manning had his M-14 at the ready as he scouted the ridge-line of the mountain range they were flying over. In their haste to drop to their insertion point, none of the other Phoenix Force commandos had brought along communications gear, so McCarter and Manning had no idea what kind of situation they would find once they reached the meadow.

“I’m glad we’ve got some backup in the belly of this sucker,” McCarter said, “but I’d trade them in a second for some bloody rocket pods and a nose gun.”

“Maybe next time,” Manning said.

Soon they cleared the peak and were within view of the meadow. At first, the only signs of disturbance they could see were the slain dog and a couple bullet-riddled sheep lying in the tall grass. Then Manning noticed several bodies lying amid the rocks on the south side of the mountain they’d just flown over.

“Over there,” he told McCarter, pointing at the bodies.

The Briton nodded, banking the chopper and coming in from a closer look. “Looks like our guys have been busy.”

“Yeah,” Manning said, “but where are they?”

The Skycrane’s shadow drifted across the meadow as Manning continued to scout for other signs of activity. He was about to point out a few more bodies near the fallen chestnut when the young shepherd boy raced out into view from beneath the canopy of the other trees. He waved wildly as he stared up at the chopper.

“What the hell?” Manning murmured.

“Let’s check it out,” McCarter said, slowly easing the Sikorsky downward.

The boy backpedaled as the chopper’s rotor wash swept over him, flattening the grass around him. Even before the Skycrane had set down completely, the pod doors swung open and the Spanish troops crowded the opening. Once the landing wheels had touched ground, the men piled out, crouching over as they made their way clear of the rotors. Two of them beelined to the boy and began to question him; the others, most of them armed with MP-5 subguns, quickly fanned out in all directions, seeking out the enemy.

“Those lads don’t waste any time, do they?” McCarter deadpanned as he killed the engines and unstrapped himself from the pilot’s chair.

“Reminds me of us,” Manning observed, still scanning the surrounding meadow. “I still don’t see the guys.”

“I don’t like it,” McCarter said, worry creeping into his voice. He reached for his holster, drawing a 7-round, .380 ACP EA-SA Compact.

Once they’d deplaned, McCarter and Manning made their way to the two soldiers interrogating the shepherd boy. One of the men was the unit’s leader, Captain Raul Cordero, a tall, ruggedly handsome officer with dark eyes, thick brows and an equally thick mustache that only partially obscured his pronounced harelip. He was fluent in seven languages, including Basque and English.

“He says they fought off the BLM, but one of your men was shot a few times in the side,” he reported to McCarter. “He says his father is ill, as well.”

“Where are they?” McCarter wanted to know.

“There,” the boy interjected, pointing in the direction of the shaded stone hut.

“The wounded man,” McCarter asked the boy. “What does he look like?”

“He is African,” the boy responded. “He was shot in the side. We can’t stop the bleeding.”

“Go ahead and check it out,” Manning told McCarter. “I’ll get a couple stretchers.”

Cordero told his subordinate to lend Manning a hand, then followed McCarter and the boy toward the hut. On the way, McCarter had the boy once again describe what had happened. He found out that Hawkins was with James, but that Encizo had last been seen chasing after an ATV carrying some kind of large wooden crate.

“I’ll take the bird back up once we check on things here,” McCarter told Cordero.

Once they reached the hut, the boy led the two men around back. There, Calvin James lay at the base of the rear window, several yards from the man the boy’s father had shot. Hawkins was crouched behind James, pressing a blood-soaked towel against the black man’s rib cage. Nearby, the old shepherd sat with his back to the stone wall, hunched over slightly, his ashen-faced glistening with perspiration. He fanned himself with his beret, barely able to muster the strength to look up at his son.

“I’ll check the old man,” Cordero told McCarter.

McCarter nodded, then crouched alongside Hawkins. James was unconscious, lying on his side, arms and legs stretched out at odd angles.

“How does it look?” he asked Hawkins.

Hawkins shook his head. “He got nailed twice, maybe three times. Must’ve hit something, because he’s bleeding out on me. We need to get him looked at, quick.”

“Maybe being stuck with that Skycrane was a good thing after all,” McCarter muttered.

“What’s that?”

“I flew in in a Sikorsky,” McCarter told him. “It’s outfitted with one of those OR pods.”

“Decent,” Hawkins said. “Did a medic come with you?”

McCarter called over to Cordero. “Is there a medic in your unit? My guy needs surgery. Probably a transfusion, too.”

Cordero nodded, removing his palm from the old shepherd’s forehead. “Yes, we have two medics. One is the best field surgeon you could ask for.”

“Good,” McCarter said. “I have a feeling he’s going to get a chance to prove it.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Rafael Encizo slowly extended his right foot toward the base of a scrub brush growing out of the side of the cliff. Once he made contact, he eased his weight onto the limb. It felt capable of supporting him, so he lowered himself a few more inches, transferring his right hand to a narrow crevice.

He was moving at a snail’s pace and had only been able to climb ten yards down the sheer incline. The mountain goat had long since retreated from the cliff’s edge, but Encizo was committed to his downward course. Several times he’d heard the ATV, and though it was hard to judge its whereabouts given the acoustics of his gorgelike surroundings, he held on to the hope that he’d managed to outdistance it earlier and would be able to intercept the driver should he come his way.

As he continued his gruelling descent, sweat stung Encizo’s eyes and blood began to trickle from a score of places where he scraped himself against the rock. His hands and wrists were beginning to ache, and he could feel blisters forming along his fingertips. But he kept on, maintaining his focus, taking care not to rush and risk falling.

Finally he’d made it halfway down the precipice. Pausing to catch his breath, he listened intently. Suddenly his spirits rallied. The ATV now sounded as if it were headed his way. Reinvigorated, Encizo moved sideways along the cliff face, seeking out the concealment of shadows cast by a stand of tall pines lining the mountain ridge behind him. Once he reached the shade, the Cuban stayed put and waited.

Moments later, he spotted the vehicle, raising a cloud of dust as it slowly navigated its way downhill toward him. The driver’s attention was on the trail, which was barely visible beneath a layer of loose rock and wild grass.

Encizo remained still, clinging to the rock with both hands and feet. Reaching for his gun was out of the question; it would only blow his cover and make him an easy target. He was faced with another dilemma, as well. The ATV was coming to a fork in the trail. If the driver kept to his right, he’d pass directly under Encizo. If he went left, however, he’d disappear behind another outcropping and likely make his getaway before the Phoenix Force commando could reach the ground.

“Come on, baby,” Encizo whispered as the driver slowed to a stop at the fork. “Come to papa…”

Encizo’s plea, however, went unanswered.

After a moment’s hesitation, the driver of the ATV turned left and soon passed from Encizo’s view. The sound of its laboring engine began to fade, as well.

“Dammit,” Encizo cursed.

Disheartened, he once again resumed the arduous task of making his way down the cliff. Once he reached the bottom, he figured he’d have no choice but to retrace the Jeep’s course back to the meadow. Provided James and Hawkins had managed to neutralize the enemy, they’d have to wait and hope McCarter and Manning would swing by in time to try to intercept the ATV before it came down out of the mountains.

Encizo hadn’t gone far when he stopped again. He glanced over his shoulder and stared incredulously at the split in the trail. For whatever reason, the ATV had backed up and reappeared at the fork. After shifting gears, the driver slowly turned right and headed Encizo’s way.

The Cuban was no longer in the shade. He froze in place, woefully exposed, as the vehicle approached. Thankfully, the driver was too busy trying to steer his way around fallen rocks to look up. The man was in his late twenties, with shoulder-length hair spilling out from beneath his red beret. He cursed loudly as one of the front wheels rolled over a large rock, jostling the crate behind him. The container had already shifted more than a foot to one side, and the driver had to put the ATV in Neutral momentarily, then rise up in his seat and shift the load so that it was more evenly balanced. He tightened the shock cords slightly, then got back behind the wheel and drove on, eyes once again focused on the trail.

Encizo tensed and readied himself as the ATV passed directly below him.

It was now or never.

He drew a quick breath, then pushed away from the cliff and plunged.

The driver spotted him, but by then it was too late. Encizo dropped onto the crate feet first, bending at the knees to absorb the force of his landing. In the same motion, he shifted his weight forward, flattening himself against the crate’s lid. Reaching past the container, he grabbed at the driver’s neck.

The driver cried out and reached up one hand to claw at Encizo’s fingers. He drew blood, but Encizo refused to release his grip. Encizo shouted in Spanish for the man to stop the vehicle, but the man either didn’t understand him or wasn’t about to comply. Instead, he eased off on the gas and jerked hard to the right. The crate shifted, and Encizo felt himself sliding sharply to one side. His left leg dropped over the side of the crate. As he tried to reposition himself, the driver suddenly slammed on the brakes, taking Encizo by surprise. He was forced to let go of the driver’s neck and grab at the crate to keep from falling off.

Gasping for breath, the driver reached for an Uzi lying in the seat next to him.

“Not a chance,” Encizo growled.

Scrambling forward, he tackled the driver and forced him to release the brakes. The ATV began to drift off the trail, but the men were too busy grappling for the subgun to do anything about it.

As they scuffled, the driver lashed out with his elbow and caught Encizo squarely across the bridge of his nose, almost knocking him out. Blood began to flow through his nostrils and wave of nausea passed over him, but Encizo persevered and countered with a blow of his own, kneeing the driver sharply in the ribs. The man let out a howl. He’d managed to get his hands on the Uzi, however, and rammed the barrel in Encizo’s right thigh.

The moment he felt the gun against his leg, Encizo kicked outward, slamming his ankle against the underside of the dashboard. The Uzi fired harmlessly to the side. Encizo wasn’t about to let the driver get off another shot. Twisting to one side, he freed one arm and lashed out with a karate chop. He caught the other man squarely just below the temple with enough force to knock him out.

By now the ATV had left the trail completely and begun to bound wildly down a steep incline, crashing through several small pines. It glanced off the trunk of a larger tree and swerved sharply to one side. The next thing Encizo knew, he was headed straight for the lip of a deep ravine. The ATV lurched forward, bounding over a sprawl of rocks as large as bowling balls. Behind him, the crate slid forward, as well, striking him between the shoulderblades. Encizo let out a cry of pain. Finally he managed to find the brakes. The ATV brodied sideways and went into a slide before coming to a stop.

One of the front wheels had slipped over the edge of the precipice, however, and as he shut off the engine, Encizo felt the vehicle begin to teeter precariously. He hazarded a glance and saw that the ravine dropped off as sharply as the cliff he’d encountered earlier. The drop-off here, however, was more than twice the distance; it was a good hundred yards straight down to the rock floor.

When Encizo tried to move, the ATV slowly pitched forward. He quickly leaned the other way, stabilizing the vehicle. The driver lay limply beside him, one leg dangling over side. The crate now extended halfway across the driver’s seat, forcing Encizo to lean forward. He was wary of trying to push the container back. One false move and he knew he’d find himself plummeting to certain death.

He was trapped.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Let’s move it!” McCarter shouted irritably at Manning and Hawkins, who were working to detach the OR pod from the Sikorsky. McCarter stood a few yards from the chopper, holding a flag-sized strip of heavy canvas out before him to block the sun from falling on James and the shepherd boy’s father, who both lay on stretchers on the ground. Sergeant Tatis, the medic Captain Cordero had referred to earlier, was crouched over James, tending to his gunshot wounds. The boy, meanwhile, knelt at his father’s side, wiping his brow with a damp cloth.

“Hold your horses,” Manning told McCarter, “we’re almost there.”

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.