The Dying Time (Book 2): After The Dying Time (41 page)

“Yes!” Susan jumped up and pecked Walt on the cheek. He winked at her and opened the breech to reload.

BLAM! A thunderous explosion flipped their jeep onto its back. Susan was thrown clear, stunned but intact. Walt was pinned under the barrel of the 106. His legs, lying between the barrel and broken masonry, weren’t crushed, but they were broken. He was dazed, bleeding from the nose and ears from the concussion of the near miss. The enemy tank that fired the shot had rolled out into the street behind them and spotted them from two blocks away.

Walt turned his head to the left and looked over his shoulder at the tank bearing down on them. They weren’t going to waste another shot on a couple of “crunchies”. Panic flooded through Walt as he struggled to get out from under the gun. Even the pain from his legs was no deterrent. The thought of being crushed was too frightening. He thrashed back and forth in a frenzy of futile motion.

Suddenly Susan was there, struggling to lift the jeep off of him. It was no use. Tears streaming down her face she sat down beside him and cradled his head in her lap. With one hand she stroked his hair while with the other she readied her M16. She wouldn’t let him be squashed. For one instant, his hands gripped hers fiercely. Then they relaxed.

“Please, Susie, go,” Walt gasped, the pain getting to him now.

“I love you,” she responded, shaking her head.

“And I love you,” he returned. “Now PLEASE! Run! Live!”

“Without you?” She bent to kiss him. “Forget it, Cowboy.”

The tank was almost at the nearest intersection, less than forty feet away. It filled her vision as she looked at it. Almost time, she thought.

“Ain’t that jist like a woman, to make a man beg,” Walt said with a smile. From somewhere, he’d managed to dredge up his sense of humor, but she could still see the terror in his eyes.

“You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet,” she fired back in a passable imitation of his Texas drawl. “Wait’ll you try tuh marry me.”

He grinned up at her and blinked the tears from his eyes. The tank rumbled through the intersection twenty feet from them. Her finger took up the slack on the trigger of the M16. Walt caught the motion out of the corner of his eye and saw the barrel of her rifle pointing at his head. He couldn’t let her do that for him. His hand went to his holster, clutching twice for the gun that wasn’t there. Shit! The fear flared up within him almost breaking his control. He fought it down, concentrating on her last words.

“Does that mean you will?” The clanking tracks were only ten feet away now. He couldn’t look. “Marry me?”

“Yes,” she said tenderly and pulled the trigger.

Through tear-blinded eyes she spun away and ran for her life as the metal monster rolled over the jeep. She’d meant to die with him, but at the last second his words sounded again in her mind. “Run!” He told her. “Live!”

Chapter 40: Heartbroken

Susan Redfeather wandered through the blasted ruins like a lost child -- dazed and very alone. She couldn’t think about what she’d done and didn’t care what happened to her. Bullets sang past her ears, but made no impression. Allied soldiers yelled at her to take cover and she couldn’t hear them. The battle raged around her like white water during spring runoff, but the only sounds she heard were the tortured scream of tearing metal as the death machine smashed the jeep. That and the rattling clank of tank tracks--over and over.

She was supposed to die with Walt. She should have died with Walt. She didn’t want to live with this. Slowly, through the anguished haze that enveloped her, the solution appeared. Kill the tank. Then die.

Thirty minutes later, her single-minded pursuit put her in a position to act. She lay beneath the rusting hulk of a Cadillac DeVille, watching the tank rumble by. She slid from beneath the car, grabbed a handhold and vaulted aboard, probing for an opening in the metal beast, any opening she could fire through. She wanted to tear it apart with her bare hands but it was cold, dead metal and she was only flesh and spirit.

She balanced precariously as the turret spun and the vehicle clanked over piles of debris, trying to throw her off. Those inside didn’t know her only weapon was an M16. The tank spun around a corner and lurched to a stop, throwing her to her knees. The street was blocked by a pile of rubble so large even the tank couldn’t climb over it.

“Suzie, jump!”

A familiar voice. The tank started to move. She jumped.

KABLAM!

The concussive blast from the exploding tank bowled her over, rolling her ten feet. Stunned and unsteady, she crawled to her feet, bleeding from ears and nose. Why was she still alive? Something sticky was running down her side. Her knees buckled.

“Wha’ happen’d?” she asked of no one in particular.

The man with the answer to that question darted from a nearby building and threw himself down behind a shell-splintered tree, his eyes and his M16 scanning for trouble. His companion was right on his heels, taking cover behind a chunk of concrete. Seeing no danger, both men got up and approached her.

“Redfeather, you’re a sight,” Daniel Windwalker said as he strode through the smoke and dust toward her. Mitch Stonehand followed close behind, guarding the rear. Susan was speechless, shell-shocked.

Daniel was close enough now to see the haunted expression on her dirt and blood-streaked face. He knelt beside her, brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes and asked, “Walt?”

Suddenly, her arms went around him and Susan Redfeather was crying her heart out.

*

Twenty minutes later, Daniel and Mitch had her on a hospital truck heading back toward Provo.

The two surviving enemy tanks pulled back to the original breech where they took up defensive positions to guard each other’s backs. Several M113’s, facing no Allied artillery and no air attacks, began ferrying troops across the mud flats to the beachhead. It was what they should have done originally. Prince John was learning.

Chapter 41: Faith and the Eagle

The Allies were holding, but could do very little to prevent the enemy from pouring into the gap in their lines. Adam radioed the hangar for air strikes on the beachhead and was told the planes, which had just returned from silencing the enemy’s howitzers, would be there as soon as they could refuel, re-arm and get off the ground. Both Faith and Roy had dumped their last bombs on enemy troops on the way home.

Adam also called up Lieutenant Parsons and told him to move up the last remaining M102’s to within range of Springville. It left them wide open to a flanking attack from the north, but they didn’t really expect one. Soon the howitzers were dropping shells on the enemy breakthrough.

Able Emery put one of his mechanics to running around slapping hundred-mile-an-hour tape over the bullet holes in the planes, while he and his crews fueled and armed them. There were four bombs left, so he put two on each plane. They’d no sooner lifted off than he was back working on the remaining crop duster. He hadn’t been able to get the Vickers working, so he was replacing them with a belt fed M60. The work wasn’t going nearly fast enough to suit him.

Roy and Faith sped back toward Springville. They were the only two in the battle who could take the time to appreciate the splendor of the Three Sisters Peaks looming northeast of the town. They also noticed some Allied soldiers were laying a defensive mine field behind Springville, near Spring Creek. It was a good strategy. A similar mine field had held up the enemy long enough the night before to allow the Allies time to retreat from Spanish Fork to their prepared positions at Springville.

They arrived over the beachhead in time to see several enemy tanks crossing the mud flats. Some carried troops, while others pulled huge, hastily constructed sleds full of soldiers and ammo. They split up and dove to attack.

Faith’s Hornet sliced through the air as she dropped toward the lead tank. Roy was hitting the rear of the column. Hopefully, taking out the front and rear tanks would immobilize the line of vehicles long enough for the Allied howitzers to pound them. She released the first bomb, pulled up level and opened the throttle wide to put as much distance between her plane and the explosion as she could.

The lid blew off the lead tank and splatted down into the mud. The force of the explosion killed half the men on the sled the tank was towing. That didn’t keep her from strafing them on her return pass. She’d heard what happened at Bloody Lake. She started to climb back up for another bombing run.

BOOM!

The explosion rolled across the flats. Faith looked down and saw that Roy had not only blown his target, but he had an enemy plane diving on him. She reached instinctively for her radio before remembering his set was shot up. She whipped the Hornet into a spinning dive to get down and warn him, but she was too late.

Roy’s Chinook disintegrated under the sheer force of the gunfire from the P-47’s eight .5 inch machine guns. Roy probably never knew what hit him.

Tracers flying past from behind alerted her that Roy wasn’t the only one who had a problem. She snapped her plane out of the dive, pulling up into the sort of climbing turn aerobatic flyers call a chandelle. She caught her first glimpse of her opponent as he roared past: another P-47. She grabbed her radio and screamed for help. No one answered. The other Thunderbolt was climbing toward her.

Her mind raced furiously as she put the little ultralight through a series of evasive maneuvers, ending with a tight figure-eight move called a Cuban eight. They not only had her outnumbered, they were faster, could out climb and out dive her and their planes would take a lot more punishment before breaking up. She could out-turn one of them, but wasn’t too sure about two. She jettisoned her remaining bomb to improve her maneuverability. They didn’t even need to shoot her down. A blow from one of those stout P-47 wings would break her plane and swat her from the sky.

Even the turbulence from a close miss would make her little plane impossible to control. She slipped her plane from a split “S” to a spin. One of them was above her and one below. A Faith sandwich, she thought, stifling a hysterical giggle.

She pulled a tight loop and found herself on the tail of one of her tormentors. She put a few rounds into him before he climbed out of range, but to no avail. Her 12 gauge street-sweeper was great for strafing troops; it was not so good against a tough plane like the Thunderbolt.

Her only hope was to shoot a pilot or fly where they couldn’t. She dove for the deck. She was behind her own lines now, so those shooting up from below would at least be aiming at the P-47’s, not her. Her father had flown one of those birds during WWII. She remembered him telling her the Thunderbolt was a lousy close in fighter, because its huge fuselage restricted visibility and took too long to turn when dogfighting.

She zipped between the buildings of downtown Provo, so close to the ground people were ducking.

Sure enough, the P-47’s were having to pull out of their dives before they could get a bead on her and neither of them seemed willing to get down low where the small arms fire was erupting. They turned away and began dive-bombing Allied positions in and around Springville.

When Faith rolled into the hangar, the first thing she did was pull the mounting pin on the street sweeper and throw the gun down to a crewman. The disgust on her face was easy to read.

“Able,” she yelled toward the crop duster where Able Emery was working. “Get me some firepower. I want a gun with some punch.” There were tears of grief and frustration running down her cheeks as she stalked toward the plane he was working on. “I could have knocked one of them down if I had something decent to shoot with,” she concluded angrily.

Able slid out from under the Pitts, wiping grease from his hands with a rag, the beginnings of a tolerant smile on his face. He liked Faith and had tremendous respect for her flying ability, but sometimes she raised impatience to an art form.

“Try this one on for size,” he said patting the Pitts Special. “I just now finished rearming it. As soon as the Hornet’s ready we’ll go get’em.”

Faith’s frown curled up into a smile. She paused as a thought struck her. “Aren’t you taking the Pitts?”

Able shook his head. “Best pilot, best plane. And no arguments!”

Faith saw he was dead serious. She ran one hand through her hair and tied it back with a scarf. “Okay, Able.”

“One more thing,” he said. “Tactics.” He pointed to the Hornet and started for it. “I’m the bait. You’re the trap.”

“Now wait a…” she began.

“Faith!” Able butted in. “Those guys only saw you and Roy--right?”

“Yes, but…”

“Then they may think this baby is all we have left.” He patted the Hornet.

She sighed, not liking it, but seeing the logic.

Able knew he’d won his point. He waved for her to follow and headed across the hangar. “I’ve had Arnold working on some spare guns so we don’t have to put up with any more delays rearming.”

He opened the door to a storeroom. Inside were three pairs of M60’s mounted on the same type of swiveling pin-base that had secured the guns on the other ultralights. Arnold Begay, the Navajo gunsmith who’d been such a blessing to their air force, looked up from his work.

“Just need a sample of your handiwork,” Able said.

Arnold grunted as Able picked up one of the pairs and left the room, closing the door behind him. Able carried the M60’s over to the Hornet, climbed aboard, slid the gun unit onto the mount and pinned it in place. Other crewmen were already replacing the 12-gauge ammo with belts for the M60, patching holes with Gorilla Tape and refueling the bird. Not for the first time, Able blessed the pusher prop design of the Hornet. No need to install an interrupter gear on this little jewel. He wished he could use the heavier M2, but not even Arnold could get it to stop jamming when fired inverted.

Faith opted for a bathroom break while she could. When she returned, both planes were ready to go. Able Emery was sitting in the cockpit of the Hornet. He pointed to the Pitts and said, “Let’s roll.”

“I’m all for that,” Faith replied with a smile. “But what about getting fuel to the Huey? That gunship could tip this war in our favor. Shouldn’t you be putting an extra fuel tank on the Pitts so we can get the chopper into the fight?”

“It’d take too long to fly fuel to the Slick and get back. The rate the beachhead is expanding, thanks to those P-47’s, it could all be over by then,” Able said.

He fired up the Hornet, listening to the engine as only a mechanic can.

“Besides,” Able continued. “Bob Young sent a mule train to rendezvous with the relief army as soon as Stonehand got the information to him. In addition to medical supplies it carried fuel.”

He looked over at her, his eyes bleak and hard. “Right now, that’s the best we can do. Now let’s go get those planes.”

“Okay, wingman, let’s get ’em up there.” Faith started the crop duster rolling out of the hangar.

They taxied down the runway and climbed into the air, circling like hawks on an updraft to gain altitude from which to attack. Faith loved flying the Pitts; the sheer power of the stubby little crop duster amazed her, making the plane one of her all-time favorites.

*

Jason Banda was fed up with lying around. He’d be double-damned if he was going to sit in the hospital any longer while poorer pilots got themselves killed to no avail. He figured he could fly better than anybody up there, even with his left leg in a cast. He propelled himself along in his wheelchair, wincing more from reflex than pain as he bumped his broken leg against an open door. He ignored it and pushed on down the hall, halting only when he glanced into a room and saw Susan Redfeather.

She sat in a chair, staring at nothing. Even though her eyes were blackened and her nose was broken and swollen, Jason could tell she’d been crying.

“Hi, Susan.”

It took her awhile to respond, as if she was coming back from a far land. Slowly her eyes focused, still distant, but there. “Oh, hi, Jase.”

He wheeled into the room. “Girl, I been greeted more warmly by a toilet seat.”

She just stared at him and he could see his joke hadn’t registered. Okay. She’s in shock. Try something else. “What you in here for?”

“Walt...concussion...I don’t know.”

Yeah and you don’t care either, he thought. “What was that about Walt?”

“I killed him.” Pain filled her eyes to overflowing. “I had to.”

He took her hand and held it as tears rolled down her face. He didn’t know what she’d been through, but he knew a bit about war.

“Sometimes in war things happen,” he said. “Things that would never make sense to anyone who hasn’t been there.” She leaned into him from her chair and he put an arm around her. “I’m sure you did the right thing.”

She pulled away from him, her eyes wide. “You don’t understand...I’m alive.” The horror of those words spoke volumes.

He understood all right. Survivor guilt. He also understood that sympathy wasn’t going to work.

“Then act like it!”

“What?”

“You’re alive, so act like it. You sit here doing nothing and there’s good people dying out there.”

She flinched like he’d hit her. Anger flared briefly, then died.

“How, Jase? I’m all used up. Their tanks…” She swallowed hard. “have punched through and now they’ve got planes dive bombing us.”

“What was that?”

“The King has some old World War Two vintage prop jobs bombing the crap out of us,” she repeated listlessly.

“I thought Michael and Able knocked them all down yesterday. Michael came to see me last night and he said he’d even forced down a P-38.”

“Yeah, well, that was what we all thought, till these showed up. Now Michael’s down on Edge Mountain, Roy bought it and Faith and Able are all we have left.”

“Shit! That does it! I’m outta here,” Jason said as he spun toward the door.

“Just what the hell you think you’re going to do, mister busted leg?” It felt good to hit back at him.

Jason fixed Susan with a deadly serious look. “I’m gonna fly that goddamn P-38,” he said as he headed for the door. “I’m not gonna sit here feeling sorry for myself.” He could still counterpunch. He paused at the door and looked back at her.

“Susan,” he said, “I could use some help getting to the airstrip.”

She stood up and faced him. For a second he’d made her think about something other than Walt. Maybe that was the secret of coping...for now. “I guess you could at that.”

She gripped the handles of his chair and wheeled him out into the hall. “You know, Jase, sometimes you can be a real asshole.”

He looked up over his shoulder and caught her faint grin. “Yeah, I know.”

“Thanks,” she whispered so softly he almost didn’t hear.

She half expected a challenge as she wheeled him past the nurse’s desk and out the main doors, but everyone was too busy to notice. There was an old Ford pickup outside with a red cross painted on it: ambulance. The keys were in the ignition. She helped Jason in the passenger side, put his chair in the back and drove for the airport.