along the shoreline now seeming to run uphill. An eagle was glimpsed, then a darker, softer green than the woods was racing up at them, getting bigger, then WHUMP! — walls of reed-scummy water erupted all around and a sound like hail as a downpour of dead stalks and other lakeside detritus struck the Chinook’s skin.
They had come down about a quarter mile from the shore in five feet of water, marsh to the left, open lake to their right.
Young Prince was whimpering like a puppy, but no one said a word. Every one of the eight-man team had braced for a tailbone-smashing crash, but the water and marshy margin of the lake here on the southwestern end afforded them if not a soft landing, then at least a less violent one than they had any right to expect.
Tony Ruth looked the most shaken. Prince’s bright and alarmed eyes were looking up at Choir for reassurance. The pilot and copilot were shouting to each other above the noise as they shut down all ancillary systems that could quickly catch fire if the gas tanks had been perforated. In addition, there were still some of the supposedly anti-missile flares aboard, and they too posed a fire hazard.
“What happened with those damned flares?” Freeman demanded.
The pilot and copilot glared at the general. They had managed, against extraordinary odds, to bring the Chinook to a crash landing in marshland about fifty yards east of the dark line of thick woods, no one seemed badly hurt, and what was Freeman saying? Not “thank you, boys,” but what happened to the fucking flares?
“How do we know!” said the helo captain. “They’re supposed to sucker missiles into thinking they’re our exhaust, but something went wrong. Sure as hell wasn’t our flying — sir!”
“Sorry, gentlemen. You did a great job, but we all nearly bought it because—”
“Captain,” cut in the copilot, “we’re still getting the radio signal from that beeper. It’s up ahead of us about three clicks, on the lake. They’re definitely on the water, General.”
“You hear that, guys?” Freeman shouted to the team, who had already dislodged the two six-man Zodiacs from the webbing and were ready to slide them down the rear-door ramp out to the marsh, from which cold mist was blowing into the helo like smoke. “Their beeper puts them about three clicks from here on the lake, so let’s—” Rounds were thudding into the side of the helo, and through the open ramp door, Aussie could see winks of light coming from the woods about two hundred yards from their position.
“Damn!” said Freeman, “they must have split up. We can’t use the Zodiacs on the lake. They’ll pick us off like flies. Captain,” he enjoined the chopper pilot, “can you stay here and give us their bearing for as long as possible?”
“Will do.”
“Good man. Aussie, you and Sal have got the longest-range weapons. Stay with the two pilots. Hunker down, return fire. We’re going to have to wade through the marsh to the shoreline, get through the woods to that road, and hit those bastards from the rear. No other way.”
“I’ll radio for reinforcements,” said the pilot, “if the helo’s box is still working.”
“Good,” said Freeman, who then ordered everyone to lighten their packs. The copilot informed him that while the radar was still functional, the chopper’s radio was out. The best the pilots could do was keep Aussie and Sal informed of the getaway boat’s position so that as well as being able to return fire with their longer-range weapons, the SpecFor commandos could notify the rest of Freeman’s team via their MIR headsets.
“Good enough,” said Freeman. “So, Aussie, you and Sal are CNN.”
“Roger that,” confirmed Sal.
The volume of incoming fire zipping above their heads and tearing into the fuselage was increasing and, despite his enthusiasm, Freeman realized that there was no way he could have his team wade through the marsh and expect any of them to be alive by the time they reached the shore, let alone the edge of the woods.
“We’ll use the Zodiacs after all,” he told them. “Aussie, you and Sal get ready to throw everything you can at that bunch in the woods. The rest of us’ll drive the Zodiacs across the marsh toward the line of woods. Reeds’ll screw up the outboards’ props, but they should get us there.” The reeds, Freeman hoped, would also dampen the outboards’ noise.
The general shifted his AK-74 to his left hand and grabbed hold of the Zodiac’s pull cord, as Choir, with Prince at his side, came over the gunwale. Ruth, Johnny Lee, Gomez, and Eddie Mervyn were already in the second Zodiac. The best they could hope for was to use the body of the helo for cover, keeping it between them and the enemy’s position as they headed for shore.
Aussie reached for his G36 and Sal positioned his heavy-hitting machine gun with his sling.
“Go!” yelled the general. Aussie and Sal opened up, aiming at the winks of the enemy’s small-arms fire coming from about two hundred yards away to the northwest, the hot gases from Aussie and Sal’s weapons bending the reeds close to the helo, the two Zodiacs, on full power, speeding across the fifty yards of thigh-deep marsh between the downed chopper and the line of pine, fir, and golden-yellow larch. Aussie and Sal’s fire was not only loud but accurate, and in the melee of return fire, Aussie’s “Fritz” was almost knocked off by a ricochet caught in the helo’s rotor. He and Sal heard a cry as one of the enemy “winks” was suddenly eclipsed.
Aussie and Sal’s enfilade wasn’t the wild, sweeping cover fire seen in movies, where it seems the good guys have an endless supply of ammunition. Instead it was concentrated, well-aimed fire not meant to simply keep the enemy’s heads down but to take them out.
By the time the opposition — Aussie and Sal guesstimated there must be a group of five or six of them — had taken cover from the two SpecFors’ on-target fire, Zodiacs 1 and 2 were in thick reeds only ten yards from the woods. Freeman, the other five men, and Prince were ashore, but by now the terrorists had recovered from the surprise of Sal’s and Aussie’s heavy and accurate bursts of fire and raked the Zodiacs, putting both out of action. Prince was growling.
Freeman could see the boat first detected on the helo’s radar disappearing from view about two to three miles up the lake, close in to the northwestern shore. And he knew that with the sound of the crash, even the relatively few people who had cabins near or around the lake would raise an alarm which, he hoped, would bring police reinforcements and local reservists from Sandpoint. But the town was fifty miles away by road, and by the time any reinforcements might arrive, the terrorists in the boat would have gotten beyond the lake proper and entered the two-and-a-half-mile-long channel that would take them into Priest Lake. All of which rapidly brought Freeman to the conclusion that there was only one thing to do. His six-man squad would have to do a marathon — minimal-ration, ammunition pack, forty pounds to a man — along the lone fifteen-mile section of the secondary road, an old logging trail that ran more or less parallel to the lake at a distance of a quarter of a mile in places, four miles in others, from the water. There was no chance that he and his five could outrun the terrorists fleeing in a boat, but he might be able to reach another boat or vehicle to catch up with them or head them off.
The general hoped that meantime the Hawkeye would be frequency scanning, and, while he would be unable to make contact with the helo any longer, that it would keep him updated via his modular infantry radio. Freeman had one asset that would save some time: Prince. With the terrorists’ scent firmly impressed upon his olfactory sense, he should be able to help them avoid any time-consuming, deadly ambushes by the five or so rearguard terrorists who had been firing from the edge of the woods at the helo. These scumbags would almost certainly cut back through the dense woods and rush to the road. Then Freeman suddenly realized his advantage. If he, Choir, Ruth, Gomez, Johnny Lee, and Eddie Mervyn could run to the secondary road a mile and a quarter to the west of where they were at present, they might be able to beat these rearguard terrorists who, he saw on his tactical map, were at the foot of a densely forested slope. The terrorists were three miles from the secondary road rather than the one mile his team had to cover before reaching it.
“Right,” said Freeman quickly. “We go. Fast!” Adding, “Now we’ll see who’s been spending too much time with Mommy!” Freeman thought of Margaret, but immediately pushed her out of his mind. Gomez, Eddie Mervyn, and Tony Ruth exchanged grins.
The team headed off, Freeman on point, through the thick woods and the ubiquitous salal brush, its green, mist-polished leaves pushing against them at shoulder height with the same kind of determination, it seemed, as the plant used whenever it invaded a new area, crowding out all other vegetation in its way. They were violating the first rule of the Special Forces: be quiet. The salal in particular, while not prickly, had leaves that were rigid enough to resist a mere brushing aside as one could do with sword ferns and the like, and the six men and dog created so much noise that it sounded to Choir as if a tank was moving through. But Choir knew that the general knew when to break the rules, and besides, Prince was nearby, ready to stop and stiffen at the merest whiff of a terrorist’s scent.
Then they got a break. They had reached a hiker’s trail, presumably one that linked the secondary road and
