Authors: Lewis Perdue
The first MP burst into Talmadge's room before Rex or I got our balance. The MP aimed his sidearm at us as a second MP lunged in. Suddenly, from the shadows behind the door the aluminum tubing of a crutch bottom arced out of the darkness and caught the first MP squarely on his nose, snapping his head back beneath a geyser of blood, showering dark and black in the dim light.
"Yeeeeeeeeee
hah
!" A rebel yell followed the blow, and I knew Talmadge had to be somewhere behind it.
The MP's finger closed on the trigger as he staggered back into his partner. The slug plowed into the apparatus behind the bed.
"Get back!" Rex yelled behind me as he rushed forward and loosed a long blast from the big bear spray container. The potent chemicals guaranteed to stop a bear in its tracks wrenched out two sustained screams from both men as they staggered back into the hallway. Talmadge propped himself on one crutch as he leaned against the door. Rex helped him shove the door shut, then jammed the wood-splitting wedge under it. I rushed him the hand sledge.
"By damn that Shanker boy is all right!" Talmadge yelled. "Sum'bitch promised he'd get me outta here!"
Rex hammered the wedge tight beneath the door before the men outside threw their weight against it. Outside, new voices joined the urgent babble, one of which made me think of the old gin in Itta Bena.
"Okay, let's rock," I told Talmadge. I leaned over and picked up his bony, huskthin frame and carried him over to the window.
"Can you stand?" I asked.
"Course I can. I can walk some too."
"Cool."
The old man was surprisingly capable, probably from mainlining adrenaline. I harnessed him in.
Across the room, Rex bent over the paint-thinner can and sloshed the contents under the door. The sharp solvent smell pricked at my nose as I held out a makeshift nylon web sling to Talmadge. "Step into this."
Rex hurried over to us, pulled a road flare from a cargo pocket, ignited it, and tossed it by the door.
A loud
whoomp!
filled the room with brilliant yellow light.
"That should make them back off," Rex said as he helped me secure Talmadge. Moments later, the room's sprinklers started.
"Jasmine," I called into the radio. "Start your ascent."
"Roger."
Outside, the helicopter's engine revved. From beyond the room door came the whoosh of fire extinguishers, then the nasty, sharp, splintering blows of a fire ax. They'd be inside soon.
Finally, we attached bright yellow, shock-absorbing lanyards between our safety harnesses and the helicopter. The rope slack disappeared as the door buckled. Outside, the helicopter moved until our ropes led out at roughly forty-five degrees.
I stepped behind Talmadge and gave him a bear hug as the room door imploded. "Get us out!" Rex screamed into his radio. The helicopter's engine screamed; the rope snapped taut, the shock-absorbing lanyards stretched almost lazily, lifting us gently off our feet. Rex and I fended our way over the windowsill. Suddenly, the lanyards' elastic slack bottomed out and we slingshot into the gathering dawn with gunshots sounded from behind.
"Clear," I radioed.
Rex, Talmadge, and I bobbed like yo-yos at the end of our lines, awful for equilibrium but great for making us tough targets. The unmistakable report of an H&K MP5A at full automatic sounded from the roof as Jasmine dipped the nose of the helicopter to gather speed, jinked, then labored upward. Another volley burst from the H&K hit the fuel tank and spawned a mist of aviation gasoline. Then the M21 cracked loud and sharp. I prayed Tyrone's shots wouldn't ignite the high-octane fuel. Passing out of this world as a tiki-torch bungee boy had never ranked high in my pantheon of ways to die.
David Brown burst through the hospital's roof access door in time to see the old helicopter rise gently into the approaching dawn. His heart hammered and the tobacco rawness burned at his throat as he hustled across the roof.
The helicopter dipped suddenly out of sight beneath his first volley. Brown ignored the Marlboro complaints in his chest as he sprinted for a better shot. Then the old chopper labored into his sights again. As the Heckler and Koch came alive in his hands, Brown saw a muzzle flash from the helicopter's passenger seat. In the next eternally long split instant, Brown felt a crushing impact squeezing his chest. The last thing he remembered was falling into the darkness beneath the roof.
Jasmine jinked the wounded old chopper up, down, and sideways to throw off the shooters. The erratic movement bungeed us like a paddleball. Rex, Talmadge, and I clung together to dampen the wild gyrations.
Looking back, I caught a split glimpse of the shooter with the submachine gun falling off the roof. The shooting stopped then, but the spray of aviation gasoline grew worse. The droplets of high-octane gasoline sprayed from the right fuel tank, immediately above the dangerously hot exhaust.
Our wild oscillations evened out as we made our way across I-55 and over the Pearl River forest and flood plain.
Jasmine steered us east toward a waypoint Rex and Tyrone had set the previous afternoon. In my night-vision scope, the tops of the tallest trees passed not more than fifty feet below. I scanned the area ahead and caught sight of a set of towering high-voltage pylons. I keyed my radio.
"Do you see the high-voltage lines ahead?"
Tyrone answered, "I've got them in the sniper's scope. Our van's just beyond."
"The wires might be a moot question," Jasmine said.
Before I could ask her what she meant, the spray of aviation gasoline stopped and the engine stuttered.
Rather than throttle back as I expected, I hear her rev the engine faster and louder than ever. We climbed erratically into the predawn sky.
"We're close to the van. I can autorotate to it if we have enough altitude." The engine stuttered and roared according to no pattern, but her calm, matter-of-fact words dampened my desperation.
Rex tapped on my helmet. "There," he yelled into my ear, and pointed toward the white van he had "requisitioned" from the airport long-term parking lot and positioned among the trees beside a construction site.
Suddenly the engine choked, tried to restart, then died, leaving us with unpowered autorotation's lazy, low swooshing. Closing in ahead, the open-girdered arms and legs of the electrical pylons clutched at us like giant robots. Red flashing lights warned us away.
The low, sixty-cycle hum of electricity reached us before we spotted the wires.
"Jesus!" I yelled when I saw the light of first dawn frosting the huge cables. The helicopter might clear the wires, but not its dangling cargo. If the wires snagged us, certain death awaited everyone.
"Climb up to the skids," I yelled in Rex's ears.
We let go of each other and commenced all new erratic trajectories that unbalanced the helicopter further. Rex and I hauled up on the ropes for all we were worth as the wires grew closer.
Darryl Talmadge mumbled the Twenty-third Psalm. I remembered the words clearly from having recited them every day at the start of school in Itta Bena. Silently, I said them along with him as I strained to pull us up.
About the time we got to the part about the "valley of the shadow of death," I was fearing evil more than I ever had before. I thought of Jasmine, Camilla, and what life meant, and I climbed harder, faster.
On the other side, Rex had reached the skid and levered himself up.
Above me, Tyrone leaned out, hauling on my rope.
The wires reached for me. The hair on my body stood up from the electrical field around the wires. One spark and the avgas saturating the helicopter and my clothes would ignite.
I grabbed the skid as the loop of my rope, still draped below us, slid gently over the first wire. With Talmadge strapped to me, I could not pull myself up on the skid, and as our feet headed for the last wire, I swung our legs upward.
My cup ranneth over when we cleared the last wire.
Rex was up on the skid, but Talmadge and I were half on and off, ready to be crushed no matter how soft the landing. As the ground rushed up toward us, I slid us down the rope again. As we neared the ground, I unsnapped us from the rope, then I let go and rolled as soon as my feet touched the ground.
Suddenly, a muffled thump filled the silence as the first of the chopper's skids sank deep into the newly graded dirt. The chopper's momentum rolled it over. The powerless rotor dug once into the soft earth, then stopped.
I freed myself from Talmadge and rushed over to the chopper. Rex had already climbed out.
"Well, any landing you can walk away from is okay by me," he said as he stood up, his coveralls slick with the bright red clay.
"Word," Tyrone said.
My heart soared when Jasmine's head appeared. I rushed through the boot-sucking mud to help her climb down.
"Sorry about the landing."
"One of the best ever," I said, hugging her tight to me. Talmadge finished the Twenty-third Psalm. But before his "Amen" faded, three SWAT-clad men with Heckler & Koch MP5A submachine guns rushed from behind the white van.
Dan Gabriel stood at parade rest amid a canyon of hand-polished, teak wine racks filled with a priceless anthology of the world's finest wines, including complete vertical collections of every top château in Bordeaux. Engraved brass tags marked each bottle with name and vintage.
Clark Braxton's domed wine cellar had been carved out of the conical volcanic extrusion by the same wine-cave contractor who made the vast barrel-aging caves at the base of the hill where Gabriel and Frank Harper had been imprisoned upon their arrival.
The wine-cellar walls had been left in the natural stone and the floor covered in marble. The room and racks, which stretched fifteen feet or more and had rolling ladders with shiny brass fittings, cost far more than the median $500,000 northern-California tract house—not counting the value of the wine.
Two interlocked nylon cable ties bound Gabriel's hands at the small of his back. He tried to ignore the chaffing on his wrists as he looked through an arch of tinted-glass doors, two pairs of half-inch-thick plate glass set like an air lock to avoid fluctuations in cellar temperature.
Massive redwood doors flanked the glass and framed a room beyond with a broad window opening out over the western periphery of Napa Valley. Through this narrow portal, Dan gazed at the jagged volcanic and quake-rift hills and tried to find his calm inner center that had been his salvation many times before.
In the distance, smoke drifted into the valley from a fire on a ridge hidden from view. The California heat had baked the humidity into single digits and made the entire state a tinderbox, as it did every year.
A C-130, painted brilliant international orange, came from the right and made a water drop. As the C-130 flew out of sight, Gabriel focused closer, on the room beyond the door. Braxton was there, out of sight somewhere to the left in a room dedicated to tasting new vintages of wines.
The guards who had brought Gabriel and Harper up the service elevator said Braxton would see them when he was finished tasting a new vintage sent to him by the owner of an ultrapricey wine-cult vineyard in Yountville.
Gabriel turned slowly. The two guards stood beyond his reach. Beyond them, Frank Harper snored in an antique chair his head resting on a polished oak table. A small pool of spittle collected on the polished table. In deference to his frail constitution, Harper remained unrestrained by anything other than his own physical deterioration.
At the back of the room sat a glistening, cylindrical glass elevator, which led up to the main villa level. On the opposite side of a massive stone column sat the shaft for the service elevator carefully concealed lest even its very idea offend the aesthetic sensibilities of those who would gather to appreciate what
The Wine Speculator—
the influential and oh-so-trendy magazine for wine snobs and wannabes—gushingly called "the most ethereally supreme collection of wines ever assembled in one place at any time in history. If General Clark Braxton's collection were books instead of wine, it would surpass the legendary library at Alexandria."
Braxton reveled in the influence he wielded.
As the C-130 flew back into sight, General Clark Braxton came through the far set of glass doors, then waited for those doors to close and the second set to open. One of the guards moved quickly to position himself between the General and Gabriel.
Braxton held a small digital sound recorder in his hand as he walked into the room and stopped inside the door a dim silhouette against the bright landscape beyond. Gabriel squinted, which, he surmised, was precisely what the General wanted.
The guard nearest Harper jerked the old man upright.
"Let the feebleminded old bastard sit." Braxton's voice ran thick with derision, annoyance, boredom.
Harper's face registered a collage of surprise, pain, and anger.
Braxton shook his head slowly. There was a click from the recorder in Braxton's hand. Gabriel heard his own voice and Harper's.
First came the conversation of Gabriel's phone call to the elderly doctor, then the kitchen conversation. Braxton's face grew deeper shadows until he snapped the recorder off with a flourish.
"Welcome to my 'damned Masada fortress,' as you put it," Braxton said. "Yes, Frank, I have worried about you for quite some time. I had hoped to be wrong about time and guilt loosening your lips, but I have never won a battle on hopes, just on caution and preparation.
"And you—" Braxton's eyes burned with anger as he stared at Dan Gabriel. "You of all people. I trusted you." Braxton's jaw muscles trembled as the General struggled for control.
"You are a traitor." Braxton stepped forward and spit liberally in Dan Gabriel's face. Gabriel grasped for his inner calm and focused on the cedarlike aromas of cabernet sauvignon subliming from the spit. Gabriel's control nearly deserted him when Braxton slapped his face, but a vision of the consequences, being manacled, surrounded by guards, restrained him.
"I was giving you the command of the most powerful military ever assembled in history," Braxton said. "You have pissed away a soldier's ultimate dream."
Braxton turned and made his way over to the wine racks. He ran his fingers lightly over one of the tags. "Patton nearly died the day this bottle was filled and sealed." He looked at Gabriel. "He was a
real
soldier."
The General turned again to the rack and moved farther down. His hand rested lovingly on another tag. He caressed the brass. "Teddy Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill a week or so after the grapes were harvested for this one.
"It shows how wrong I was." Braxton turned again to Gabriel. "I thought you were made of the right stuff to fill their shoes and more!" He shook his head. "I was so wrong, but you must now live with the consequences. You will not preside over the Xantaeus Era. We will use our new weapon preemptively to make sure no one challenges America's might again.
"We'll celebrate this the day after tomorrow," Braxton said "There will be quite a few people here, Dan. In addition to my Defense Therapeutics staff, there will be quite a few friends of yours from the Pentagon; I imagine they will be sad to learn what happened to you." Braxton smiled, then looked at Harper, "And you as well, you old fool. But tragedies happen in the pursuit of peace."
Harper nodded slowly. Then Gabriel caught a malevolent glint in the old physician's eyes.
"So, Clark." Harper managed a smile as he looked around at the massive assemblage of wine. "Why have you collected all this wine and in all these years I have never seen you drink any?"
Braxton offered Harper a superior smile. "Drink it?" He paused, then said louder, "Drink it! Any damn fool can drink it!" He raised his arm and made a complete circle. "It takes discipline, self-control, and the true appreciation of the wine
not
to drink it, but to
have
the wine, to
possess
it, to put it where it, by God, belongs! That's what separates the dilettante from the true collector." Braxton spoke now with a near religious fervor. "To select, acquire, and protect, and most of all to
complete
the collection, is the mark of greatness. For when the collection is complete, it deserves a reverence transcending material value."
"But do you appreciate it, enjoy it?" Harper persisted.
"You are more pathetic than I ever realized, Frank. When a man rises to my level, possession, not appreciation, counts."
Braxton walked over to Harper.
"And that, you little, broken-down quack, is something you will never comprehend in the few hours you have left to breathe."
Without another word or even a final glance at either man, Braxton strode past and disappeared up in the shiny, cylindrical glass elevator.