Red Hammer: Voodoo Plague Book 4 (3 page)

I had time to see two of the Russian Mi-28 ‘Havoc’ strike
helicopters explode in mid-air along with one of the Apaches before our pilot
reacted.  A Havoc was coming down the river, straight for us, and he spun us into
a nose dive for the water, flaring and jinking to the left at the last second. 
A missile streaked by close enough that it seemed I could touch it, then we
were gaining altitude and turning so fast I was pinned at the end of my safety
tether.  A moment later a hellfire missile leapt off the right pylon with a
roar, tracked the Havoc for a couple of seconds and detonated as it impacted
the Russian’s tail rotor.  The back half of the helo sheared off, the remainder
of the aircraft spinning out of control and crashing into the Mississippi
River.

The pilot continued to fly an evasive pattern and I crawled
my way to the door mounted minigun and started trying to strap in.  Blanchard
saw what I was doing and made his way across the tilted deck to help.  Finally
secured in place I grabbed the headphones Crawford held out to me and slapped
them on my head. 

“Come on you fucking bastard, hold still for Daddy!”  I
heard the pilot’s voice over the intercom a moment before another missile
roared off its pylon, destroying another Havoc that was pursuing a Black Hawk. 
Unfortunately the Russian had launched at the same time we had, the Black Hawk
exploding into a ball of fire a heartbeat before the Havoc died.

We headed north, following the river, directly towards the main
air battle that had quickly developed.  I wasn’t able to count aircraft, but it
looked at first blush like the Russians were getting the worst of it.  Roaring
under the bridge, we cut speed and suddenly popped straight up a couple of
hundred feet, two more missiles streaking away and finding their targets. 
Another Black Hawk and an Apache exploded and both fell burning into the
tightly packed mass of infected at the eastern entrance to the bridge. 

Tearing my eyes away from the dog fight I looked for the
train.  After a moment I spotted it still rolling west.  Whoever was driving,
Jackson I presumed, had the diesels at full throttle.  Thick, black smoke
belched from each of the locomotives and the train appeared to be rapidly
gaining speed as it fled the battle.  Two Havocs peeled away from the fight
after dropping another Apache into the river, pursuing the speeding train.

“Two hostiles going after the train.”  I shouted into the
intercom.

Immediately the pilot threw us into a stomach clenching turn
and we accelerated to fall in above and behind the Russians.  Ahead I could see
the lead Havoc launch a pair of missiles.  I followed their smoke trail with my
eyes, holding my breath as they closed on the back of the train.  The first
missile struck the tracks just behind the rear car.  The explosion shredded the
metal sides of the car, and I was certain the tightly packed bodies inside, and
lifted the rear of the car into the air.  The second missile arrived, slamming
into the undercarriage of the damaged car.  Bodies, body parts and metal shards
flew in every direction as the car disintegrated. 

Four missiles sped away from the Black Hawk, two for each
Havoc.  The Russian closest to us reacted almost instantly, pulling up and to
the right while deploying magnesium flares in an attempt to decoy the missiles
away.  As he tried to evade the attack he kept pulling through his turn, speed
bleeding off and lined up beautifully with the Black Hawk’s open side door.  I
had a perfect sight picture on him and squeezed the trigger on the door mounted
minigun and held it down.  My aim wasn’t as perfect as I thought, red tracers
flying underneath the desperately maneuvering helo, but I kept firing and
adjusted until I pumped a couple of hundred slugs into the helicopter.  Engine
knocked out and black smoke billowing, he started falling and I turned my
attention back to the train just as the other two missiles impacted the lead
Havoc and blew it out of the sky.

Dodging around the plume of smoke from the destroyed
helicopter we caught up with the train.  All that remained of the rear car was
a few feet of the steel frame at the front, still on its wheels and coupled to
the next car.  I wondered how many people that Russian pilot had just killed,
but put the thought out of my head as we spun around and headed back east.  I
leaned forward as far as possible, trying to see ahead of us, but I couldn’t
get a view of the battle we’d left behind to save the train.  Tilting my head
back I hoped for a view out the windscreen, but couldn’t see around Colonel
Crawford whose broad back completely blocked the narrow access into the
cockpit.

I wanted to ask what was going on, but since I didn’t need
that information at the moment I decided to stay off the intercom and not
distract the pilots.  Instead, I busied myself with checking over the minigun
to make sure it would be ready when needed.  Satisfied with its status I leaned
forward and scanned all of the sky that I could see.  No other aircraft were
visible, ours or Russian.  Our direction and speed changed a few moments later
and I found myself looking down at the Havoc I had shot up.  The helicopter was
sitting in a rice paddy at a severe tilt, rotor slowly turning and black smoke
still billowing from the destroyed engine.  I knew helicopters that lost power
could uncouple their rotor from the engine and let the air flow of their fall
spin the rotor and slow them down so they would have a relatively soft
landing.  This is called auto-rotation, and my best guess was the Russian pilot
had pulled it off.

Three Russians stood in knee deep water a hundred feet from
their downed aircraft, heads tilted up watching us as we orbited the crash
site.  I tracked them with the minigun, hand on the trigger, ready to reduce
them to pulp if they did anything I didn’t like.

“Hold fire.”  I heard Crawford’s voice over the headset. 
“We’re going to have a chat with our visitors.”

We orbited two more times, then stabilized into a hover with
the side of the Black Hawk with the minigun towards them.  I held them in my
sights as we landed fifty yards away, the pilot keeping the rotor spinning at
near take off speed.

“Major, you and the Captain switch places and let’s go greet
the Russians.”  Crawford ordered.

Blanchard stepped up and quickly unstrapped me.  When I
could move freely I vacated the door gunner’s spot, the Captain quickly
slipping in and gripping the minigun.  I strapped him into place and looked
around for the Colonel.  He was standing behind me, holding out an M4 rifle. 
Grabbing it, I slipped the sling over my head and dropped the magazine to check
the load.  Satisfied, I slapped the mag back into place, made sure a round was
chambered and set the selector to burst mode.  A quick pat-check of my vest to
make sure I still had spare magazines on my body and I was ready to go.

Moving to the edge of the cabin I jumped to the ground,
splashing into two feet of water and stepping forward to make room for
Crawford.  Rifle up and sighted on the three Russians, I heard the Colonel
splash to the ground.  He stepped next to me and raised his pistol.  We started
wading towards the waiting men.

“How did we fare?”  I asked as we walked, referring to the
air battle.

“All the Russians are down.  We lost eleven aircraft.”  As
he spoke an Apache roared into a hover a hundred yards to the left of the enemy
soldiers, chain gun trained on their position.

Moving across the flooded rice paddy wasn’t easy.  Footing
was slippery and the uneven ground under the water kept us from moving very
fast.  Treading carefully, we crossed the open space, spreading apart as we
approached the men and finally stopping a dozen feet from where they stood
waiting.  My rifle was up and trained on the senior man present, a Captain if
my memory of Russian insignia and rank was correct.  He stood holding his left
arm tight across his body, the limb obviously broken.  He bled from numerous
cuts on his face.  The other two were a Sergeant of some rank and an enlisted
man that I guessed was the equivalent of a Corporal or Specialist in our Army. 
Each of them were banged up and bloody, but neither seemed to have any broken
bones.

“Do you speak English?”  Crawford addressed the officer.  He
glared back for a moment before nodding his head.  “Good.  Then you’ll
understand this.  I’m Colonel Jack Crawford of the United States Army and you
are my prisoner.  Any resistance or failure to immediately cooperate and I’ll
put a bullet in your head.  I don’t give a fuck about the Geneva Convention.  Do
you understand?”

The Russian’s eyes shifted from Crawford to me, looking down
the barrel of my rifle which was solidly trained on his face.  He glanced up at
the hovering Apache before turning his attention back to the Colonel.

“Da.  I understand.”  He replied in surprisingly good
English.

Captain Lee Roach struck the surface of the Mississippi at a
bad angle, getting the wind knocked out of him.  He plunged deep, but didn’t
try to swim or reach the air.  The shock of first the impact, then the cold of
the water had stunned him, slowing his racing mind.  Water that was at first
cold was now comforting, and for a moment Roach didn’t care if he lived or
not.  But, like any predator, he was first and foremost a survivor and
eventually started stroking towards the light.  Breaching the surface, he
looked around for the bitch, but didn’t see her or the damn dog anywhere.  Just
steel grey water in every direction.

The current was strong, the river swollen from the storms
upstream, and he was swiftly carried south.  Something bumped hard into his
back and turning his head he saw a wooden shipping pallet, floating low in the
water.  Grabbing on he was able to pull his upper body onto the pallet,
grasping each edge and shifting until he was balanced.  The wood sank a few
inches deeper into the river, then its buoyancy overcame the added weight of
Roach’s body and he rested as the mighty river swept him along.

It wasn’t long before the sound of high explosive ordnance
reached his ears.  Using his legs as a rudder he was able to steer the pallet
into a spin in time to see the mid-span of the bridge collapse into the river. 
Relieved to have escaped, but frustrated that he hadn’t had time to play with
the bitch, Roach relaxed and watched the shoreline slip by.  He guessed the
river was moving him at four or five miles an hour and decided to stay in the
water no more than an hour.  He wanted to get away from the Major, but not too
far.

It wasn’t long before he heard a helicopter approaching, but
there was nothing he could do, caught in the current in the middle of the river. 
But the helicopter never came as far downstream as he was floating.  Spinning
the pallet, he watched it hovering, a long rope dangling into the water.  After
a moment the aircraft rose and headed for the western shore, a figure clinging
to the end of the line.  Was it the bitch?  Had she survived the fall?  He
couldn’t tell, and soon the pallet spun again and he lost sight of the rescue.

He entered a sharp curve and started paddling and kicking
frantically as the current took him within a dozen yards of the eastern shore
which was lined with a wall of infected.  Coming out of the curve the river
immediately bent again, the current sweeping him close to the western shore. 
This time he paddled and kicked, aiming for a sandbar that stuck out into the
water.  When he realized he couldn’t free the pallet from the force of the
water, he slipped off and swam as hard as he could, angling for the sand.  He
had a bad couple of moments when it looked like he was going to be swept past
his goal, but suddenly he was out of the pull of the current and able to swim
the final few yards.

Crawling onto the dry sand, he collapsed face down and
rested.  Catching his breath, he lifted his head at the sounds of an aerial
battle to the north.  Who the hell was fighting?  Roach was curious, but not
too curious, standing up and running across the sand to the shoreline where he
disappeared into a narrow strip of trees growing along the edge of the river. 
Pausing, he checked himself over, dismayed to find he had lost every weapon other
than a small, four inch folding pocket knife tucked into a pouch on the vest he
still wore.

Roach pushed through the trees and came up against the slope
of the levee.  He crawled up it, cautiously poking his head above the edge to
look around.  To the south a few hundred yards, sunlight glinted off the
windshield of a vehicle.  It was too far away to tell what kind of vehicle, but
it was sitting on the gravel roadway that ran along the top of the levee and
Roach needed transportation.  He knew his limitations, and walking across open
country, living off what he found and fighting the infected with a four inch
pocket knife was not something he even imagined he was capable of doing.

Following the river south, he walked along the lowest edge
of the levee to stay hidden from any of the vehicle’s occupants.  When he
thought he’d covered enough distance he slowly crawled to the top and looked
along the levee.  His estimation had been good and he was pleased to find that
he had walked past the vehicle’s position by ten yards.  As he hid in the weeds
and surveyed the area he detected a faint electronic beeping sound.  Carefully
he looked all around, but couldn’t identify the source of the noise.

Ignoring the sound for the moment, Roach concentrated on the
vehicle.  It was a fairly new, four wheel drive Ford pick-up, painted white
with an orange lensed light bar on the roof.  A large spotlight penetrated the
roof in front of the light bar, two smaller ones sticking out from the pillars
on either side of the windshield.  The truck was facing north, the passenger
side towards Roach, and in big, red letters on the door closest to him he read
‘St. Francis Levee District – Official Use Only’. 

When Roach saw the lettering he smiled.  No one was going to
be checking on the levees after everything that had happened.  What was the
point?  Even if they found a major problem, there wasn’t anyone left to fix
it.  This truck had to have been abandoned, or maybe the driver got infected
and wandered off.  Regardless, his usual good luck was back.  He’d just found
the transportation he needed to survive.

Climbing to his feet, he fished out the folding knife,
flicked it open and carefully walked up to the truck.  As he approached the
beeping sound grew louder, the source becoming apparent when he was close
enough to see the driver’s door standing open.  Smiling again, he trotted the
rest of the way, hopped into the cab and closed the door, silencing the alert
tone for keys having been left in the ignition.  Roach twisted the key and the
truck’s engine rumbled to life.  A quick scan of the dash showed he had a
nearly full tank of gas.  Now.  Where to go?

The road on top of the levee was narrower than the truck was
long, so there was no way to turn around and go back.  That meant there was
either a turn-around on ahead, or a way off the levee.  Shifting into drive,
Roach accelerated down the gravel road, keeping his speed low to prevent
creating a dust plume that could be seen for miles in the flat terrain.  As he
drove, Roach kept an eye on the river below, hoping to spot the bitch.  If she
was in the water he didn’t know how he’d get to her, but he still wanted to
feel her squirm under his hands as he violated her in every way imaginable.