Charles Taylor - First Salvo

It was a good thousand yards to the summit, more than half a mile. It wasn’t as steep as some of the territory he’d covered in the past hour, and he had already picked out his course to the top, but it would be slower going than he liked.

Ryng waited. A tempting voice in the back of his mind kept saying, Aw, go ahead, because once you get over the top it’s downhill all the way . But another voice, the one developed through years of training, was the one he followed. It told him that the odds for the downhill side were very long indeed if he tried to make it now.

He waited — waited for the hum of the rotors that would presage a helo coming over the peaks to his right, a hum that would be followed by the louder beat as the craft closed in on his position.

How the hell do you fight a goddamn helicopter armed with rockets and machine guns? Throw rocks at it? Ryng glanced around him. There were rocks, but nothing else. He picked one up and threw it in disgust. As it landed and bounced down the hill, a small cloud of birds rose at the intrusion. As quickly as they flew into the air, they settled down with irritated squawking at the disturbance. Stay quiet , he told himself. Disturbing those birds is like waving a handkerchief .

It wasn’t long before the sound came to his ears. Ryng watched patiently as the craft came close over the snow of the adjacent peak, skirting first along the top of the ridge above him. It didn’t bother with the valley area below him. That convinced Ryng that this time someone who knew what he was doing was riding shotgun.

For some reason, the helo swept the area to his left as it approached the snow line, keeping low, hovering whenever it neared a shadowed area. Each time, the birds rose whether in defiance or confusion, forcing the helo to rise and drift off to avoid fouling its rotors.

That’s one idea , Ryng thought — piss off the birds and maybe they’ll do the work for me . The more he thought about the idea, the more feasible it became, considering that he had nothing whatsoever to defend himself with. Now, on the opposite side of the boulder from the helo, he collected a small arsenal of rocks, heavy enough, he thought, to upset nesting birds, light enough to be somewhat accurate.

Time to waste some of his ammunition. He threw half-a-dozen stones as rapidly as he could down the slope to his left. He hoped that the disturbed birds would draw some fire.

It worked too perfectly.

With a roar, the helo banked in his direction, swooping toward the rising birds. Ryng saw the telltale smoke from either side as two rockets were fired into the slope above the frantic birds.

Wham… wham . The rockets burst fifty feet above the spot, sending an avalanche of rocks down through the area. The loose surface would wipe out anything in its path as it increased in mass.

Smart — but not so smart , Ryng said to himself. Went for the quick kill without checking first. Maybe he figures I still have some protection. On the other hand, he’s just used up half his rocket load — only two left .

As he watched, fascinated by the small craft’s firepower, the helo circled at a slightly higher altitude. Then the air was shattered by the multibarreled machine guns. Something obviously had attracted the helo’s eye. Whatever it was, a deadly hail of bullets sprayed the area.

Ryng thought about the snowfield. He would have been just about at the top of this point. Christ, there wouldn’t be enough of me left to color the snow!

The air was filled with birds circling and turning in fear above their nests. There was no longer any way the men in the helo could use the bird population to find him. The helo was forced to a higher altitude to avoid fouling the birds. Anything that will do the trick , Ryng thought, trying harder to make himself one with the boulder that was his only protection. Now they have a problem too .

The helo dropped farther down the slope, moving away from his position and the birds. Have they given up already? Not a chance. They’ve got time on their side. They’ll let everything settle down, then move in again .

The son of a bitch knows I’m here , Ryng realized. He didn’t mess around in the lower valleys. He came right up near the snow line and fired at the first thing that moved . Being the object of a hunt when there was nowhere to run was not Ryng’s idea of fun.

The helo swept back and forth below him, dropping farther down the slope then working its way back in his direction. Ryng looked around, determining where he might shift to next if there was even an inkling that he might be spotted. It was then that he realized he hadn’t been so damn clever after all. He’d selected the largest boulder in that section of the slope below the snow line. Could there have been a more obvious place to try to hide?

The helo, moving back up the slope in his general direction, decided the same thing. Its zigzag movement halted and the bulbous nose dipped slightly as it settled on a course directly for his hiding place.

Frantically, Ryng searched about him. There was nothing else big enough to use as cover, nothing that would serve as adequate protection if they opened fire with machine guns, and nothing at all if it used rockets. This was the only place, and Ryng, thinking exactly like Colonel Bulgan, knew they would be on top of him in a matter of seconds.

The helo did not circle around the large boulder to search for its quarry. It headed straight in.

Nearby birds rose from their nests, but this time the helo hovered about seventy-five yards away horizontal with Ryng’s position.

What the hell were they going to do? As he mulled over that question, the answer became evident. There was a telltale wisp of smoke from the left pod. Ryng had seen rockets fired before — he had even used them himself — but he had never had the misfortune of being the target. He had no more than a second to ponder the sleek missile racing in his direction before his reflexes took command. He buried his head in his arms.

Wham! The rocket hit the boulder directly with an earth-shattering explosion. The concussion rolled over him at the same instant, sucking the air from his lungs, the blast bouncing his body into the air, then smashing it back to the ground.

Ryng was unable to move, even to lift his head or draw a breath into his agonized lungs. The silence that followed the blast was broken by the sound of small rocks dislodged by the explosion rolling down about him.

The heavier ones were what jolted him back to the real world, the world of a helicopter moving in closer, its rotors piercing the air. Ryng struggled for air, desperate to return oxygen to his system before he blacked out. He could feel himself going, eyes clouding as his feeble chest spasms failed to supply the needed air. He arched his body into the air, let it fall to the ground, then increased the rhythm until the impact forced his body to react, to suck the crisp mountain air into his lungs.

He was breathing again, painfully, but breathing nevertheless. The acrid smell of high explosives came to him. Ryng sensed, even before his eyes recorded the fact, that the helo was swinging out to the right. It swam before him as his eyes focused on the approaching perspex canopy. It was close enough to see the one remaining rocket and the wicked machine gun, its multiple barrels almost in line with him.

On his hands and knees, hugging the ground, Ryng scuttled backward like a crab. The cloud of birds constantly fluttering between him and the helo seemed his only hope, but they flew to either side as the craft came closer.

Just as he ducked back, the machine gun opened fire. They had seen him! The ground erupted. Hundreds of bullets ricocheted in every direction. He felt tiny shards of stone rip into his skin like a thousand little pins. Instinctively, he covered his eyes. As the noise of the gun-burst subsided, the only thought that came to him was how one-sided it all seemed. It was an alien situation to Bernie Ryng, being unable to shoot back.