William Johnstone - Phoenix Rising

Karin removed the tourniquet and looked at the wound. “I’ve got to get the bullet out,” she said.

“How are you going to do that?”

“I’m going to pull it out,” she said, removing a forceps from the kit she had brought with her. She stuck the forceps down into the wound until she came in contact with the bullet. Then, grabbing the bullet, she pulled it out.

“Damn, it hurt more coming out than it did going in,” the wounded man said.

“Good,” Deon said. “If it was up to me you’d be dead now. So if you’re goin’ to live, I at least want you to hurt some.”

“The problem is going to be if any of the cloth from your pants went into the hole with the bullet,” she said.

“How are you going to know?”

“I’m going to look for it,” she said. She took another instrument from her kit that looked like an oversized pair of tweezers from her kit. She put this down into the wound and clamped it shut. “Ahh, feels like I got something.”

Pulling the tweezers out, she saw a small piece of cloth clamped between the arms.

“Good,” she said.

By now the bleeding had stopped and Karin took out a bottle of alcohol. “This is going to hurt a little,” she said.

“It already hurts,” the wounded man said.

Karin poured alcohol onto the wound.

“Damn, damn, damn!” the wounded man said, shutting his eyes and wincing in pain.

Karin used a cotton ball to clean the wound. Then, she soaked a second cotton ball in alcohol and stuffed it into the bullet hole. Finally, she wrapped a compression bandage around the wound and secured it tightly.

“Don’t take this off for at least seventy-two hours,” she said. She stood up. “I’m ready to go back,” she said to Deon.

“What? Are you just going to leave me here?” the wounded man asked.

“I’ve done all I can for you,” Karin said.

“But what do I do now? Where do I go?”

“You can go anywhere you want,” Karin said. “And if you keep the wound clean, it should heal without any difficulty.”

“I left my bike on the other side. I can’t walk. Will you bring it to me? It’s the green . . .” He paused and looked over toward the body of one of the other scavengers. “I mean it’s the Purple Honda VTX-1800,” he said. “Only thing is, Cootie, over there, has the keys.”

“All right,” Deon said.

“Deon, you know that isn’t his, don’t you?”

Deon shrugged. “What difference does it make now?”

Karin chuckled. “I guess you’re right.”

“Hey,” the wounded man said. “Thanks for patching me up.”

Karin nodded, but said nothing.

“Listen, ’cause you helped me? I’m going to tell you something. They’ll be back. And now they know about the machine gun and they know you’ve built a barricade in front of the hangar. They’ll be back, and this time, there will be a lot more of them. They know you have fuel.”

“We don’t have any gasoline,” Karin said.

“Doesn’t matter. You’ve got jet fuel, and it’ll trade just as well. I hear you’re building a helicopter in there.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Deon asked, coming back with the keys.

“Word gets around. If I was you, I’d get out of here as soon as you can.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Karin said.

“Yeah, well, I guess I owe you,” the wounded man said.

Deon jogged back to get the motorcycle as Karin returned to the hangar. She heard the motorcycle start just as she reached the fortifications.

Deon waited until the wounded man drove off. Then he returned to join the others. “Did you tell them what he said?” he asked Karin.

“Yes.”

“I think we’re all set now,” John said. “You’ve never flown a Huey before, have you, Jake? You think you can fly it all right?”

“Have you ever worked on a Huey before, John?”

“No, I never have. But the principles of maintenance aren’t that much different. A helicopter is a . . .” John stopped in midsentence, then smiled. “Okay, I get your point. Have at it, Jake, your chariot awaits,” John said, holding his hand out invitingly, toward the helicopter.

“I hope this jury-rigged battery works,” Jake said. “Cross your fingers that we don’t get a hung start or hot start.”

He checked battery voltage and placed the starter-generator switch in the starter position, turned on the main fuel pump, then opened the throttle to a point just below the flight idle detent. He pulled the starter trigger on the pilot’s collective pitch control and heard the igniters pop in his earphones as the engine started spooling up, monitoring his gauges closely. He was gratified to see everything move into the green. With a big smile, he gave a thumbs-up to those waiting outside. His test flight, which was nothing more than a sweep around the airfield, went well. He saw the one motorcycle going up Hatch Road, and he saw no one coming toward them. He landed and killed the engine.

“Let’s get it loaded and get out of here,” he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Dunes, Fort Morgan—Wednesday, August 8

“Lookie here,” James said as he, Bob, and Jerry were poking around in the refuse left by the hurricane.

“What?” Jerry said.

“This a solar panel power setup. Or, what’s left of it after the storm.”

“You think we can reconstruct it?” Bob asked.

“Let me see what’s here,” James said. “We’ve got the panels. We’re going to need to poke around and see if we can find everything else we need.”

“What would that be?” Jerry asked.

“We need a current regulator, something that will keep the batteries from overcharging, or draining in case the current tries to run backward.”

“Like a reverse current relay between a battery and a generator?” Bob asked.

“Yes. And if we’re going to use it in a house, we’ll also need a converter that changes DC to AC.”

“Why do we even need to mess with it?” Jerry asked. “I mean, as long as we’ve got propane, we have power.”

“What happens when we run out of propane?” Bob asked. “Where are we going to get more?”

“Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. Okay, let’s see if we can find everything that you need,” Jerry said.

“Problem is,” James said, “this setup will only power one house.”

“No problem. When the time comes and we’ve run out of propane, we’ll just choose the house we want, and we’ll all move in together,” Bob said.

“Or build us a new house,” James said. “One that will accommodate three families, and make maximum use of the electricity we can generate this way.”

“Whoa, I don’t know. I’m not much at house building,” Bob said.

“James and I will build it. You can be the gofer,” Jerry suggested.

Fort Rucker—Wednesday, August 8

With all their survival gear on board, Jake pulled pitch and the helicopter took off. As they passed over the golf course they saw two people playing golf, and Jake laughed.

“What is it?” John asked. John was in the left seat and, like Jake, was wearing a flight helmet. Jake keyed the mic switch to the first indent, which was intercom. “I always heard that come hell or high water, a committed golfer was going to play. Look down there.”

Jake made a circle around the Silver Wings Golf Course, and the two players waved up at him.

As they flew south toward the Gulf, they saw, as they expected, the highways littered with cars and trucks. Then he heard Karin’s voice on the intercom. She was also wearing a headset and was plugged in to the crew chief’s section.

“Jake, look down there,” Karin said.

When Jake looked around, Karin pointed to something on the ground. There, below, in white paint on the grass behind a farmhouse were the words: