CHAPTER 33
Gallen found the mere thirty feet from him, still kneeling from launching the rocket — he could smell the smoke from the tail. Pulling out his SIG, he waded towards the man as pieces of burning timber and steel rained into the snow, leaving deep hissing holes. Turning to look at Gallen, the mere raised his rifle but muzzle flashes erupted from the snow storm — from the other side of the bowl — and part of the mere’s head disintegrated.
Watching him sag to the red-splattered snow, Gallen crouched, waiting for the shooter. As Winter emerged from the flurries, a rocket launcher slung across his back, he eyed Gallen across the snow bowl and brought his Heckler to the sight-line.
Realising he was wearing the dead mere’s parka, Gallen shouted, ‘No! It’s me, Gerry!’ He waved his arms and Winter edged forward, the rifle not budging from its aim despite the blizzard conditions.
Gallen gingerly grabbed the front of his wolverine fur-lined hood and pulled it back, only to realise he had his black balaclava on underneath.
Heart pumping, waiting for the shot, he heard Winter’s voice. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Gerry,’ he said into a lull. ‘Gerry Gallen.’
As Winter approached, he could see blood up the Canadian’s right sleeve. ‘They’re packing rocket launchers,’ said Winter, heaving for breath.
‘We put down three?’
Winter nodded. ‘If you killed one to get that parka, that’s three. So we have maybe one more shooter and definitely a pilot.’
The search-and-rescue men in their red coveralls ran for the burning building, unaware that their helicopter had been the target.
‘We have to find that other chopper, boss,’ said Winter. ‘We can’t let them blow up our ride.’
Above the roar of the flames, the faint throb of a helicopter could be heard. It sounded as if it was everywhere at once.
‘You think the bird’s carrying rockets?’ said Gallen.
‘If they have another minigun, it’ll hardly matter about rockets.’
‘Let’s guard the helo,’ said Gallen, although his instinct was to race into the building, whose roof was starting to catch.
Handing over his Heckler, Winter started to speak but sagged into the snow before he could finish, hand clutched to his thigh.
Ducking to the ground as a bullet sailed past his ear, Gallen pulled the Canadian down further into the snow bowl, his eyes scanning for a shooter. Cocking the Heckler, Gallen leaned over the prone shape of Winter, who was going into shock; blood drained into the snow, Winter’s moans soft but audible over the wind.
‘Our four o’clock,’ snarled Winter, fighting for consciousness as he pointed over the highest edge of the bowl. ‘One guy.’
‘Wait there,’ said Gallen, moving towards the ridge line, faint in the occasional moonlight, holding a good shoulder to the weapon. Swaying his hips into the thick layer of light drift that suddenly became heavy pack snow about two feet down, he kept his sights on the ridge as he moved forward, hoping surprise would be enough to get the first shot off.
Climbing the side of the bowl, the snow getting deeper and heavier, he felt the sweat running down his back and off his face, his weakened lungs fighting for every ounce of air.
Blinking the sweat off his left eyelid as he crested the edge of the bowl, Gallen was blinded by the search lights as they swept over him, so low that he lost his balance and fell backwards. As he dropped he saw the fourth shooter riding on the landing rails of the Little Bird, the minigun’s six barrels spinning under the cockpit in anticipation of firing. There was only one target in front of that deadly gun — the search-and-rescue Cormorant.
Locking eyes with the shooter, he watched the mere point and then the helo was swinging away from its intended quarry, banking steeply as it hooked back to finish Gallen and Winter. Lying on his back, Gallen shifted the Heckler & Koch G36 to full auto and waited for the helo to make a death-pass. He aimed at the shooter riding on the rails — Delta Force-style — and they shot at each other simultaneously, the bullets raining around Gallen’s body as he launched a magazine of 5.56mm loads.
Gallen held his finger on the trigger as the bird shrieked overhead, low enough that he could hear the shooter screaming with pain above the turbines and rotor.
Trying to turn in the snow, Gallen pushed himself onto an elbow as the helo banked again, its black bodywork looking ominous against the ever-changing dance of drift snow. The shooter now hung limply, one leg hooked over the landing rail, his broken body straining on the harness as his head lolled.
Seeing the minigun spin again as the bird swooped over, Gallen aimed up and felt the click of an empty magazine and the bolt retracting back, with no reason to hammer forward again.
He realised it was over for him and his team. In one strafe that minigun and its fifty-rounds-per-second firing rate could finish himself, Winter and the search-and-rescue Cormorant, before mopping up any of the survivors.
Waiting for the coup de grace, Gallen’s mind spun out a reel of memories, of hockey fights, of high school kisses, of bad combat and good horses. His mouth was slack and his lungs had passed their use-by date about five minutes into the wreck dive. He was screwed, and as he waited for the burst of orange from the minigun to chew him into a thousand pieces, he thought of the weirdest thing: Marcia had once told him that his stubbornness was both his weakness and his strength — that his complete inability to accept defeat was more suited to a special forces command than a suburban marriage.
And she was right.
Eyes focusing on that spinning gun, Gallen smiled and summoned his last breath. ‘Fuck you!’
A long streak of white and blue plumed through the half-light and then the air expanded in a super-heated ball of flame. Turning his face from the exploding black helicopter, Gallen faced the kneeling form of Kenny Winter, who promptly keeled over sideways as he dropped the empty rocket launcher.
Voices sounded through the deafening blast of the Little Bird exploding as a burning piece of fuselage landed six feet from Gallen’s head and the smell of av-gas soot permeated the atmosphere.
The two search-and-rescue guys in their red exposure suits waded down the side of the bowl in a panic, one of them waving a fire blanket — something Gallen hadn’t seen since bunker drills in Okinawa. He heard Ford’s Aussie twang instructing someone to roll and, looking around, he couldn’t see who the ocker was talking to.
As he felt sleep coming on — the soft snow like a featherbed— the search-and-rescue guy with the blanket finally reached him and dived at his legs.
He looked down to see what was happening. The last thing he saw was his pants on fire.
CHAPTER 34
The news segment on the wall-mounted TV continued its report on the death of Harry Durville but this time named the two pilots of the Challenger, and Donny McCann, showing a picture of the Marine when he was nineteen years old and topped with his USMC dress-lid.
Allowing himself a small smile at the old photo, Gallen noticed that four days after the airlift out of the snow the North American news media still didn’t have the full story on the two helicopters that had been sent to finish what the BlackBerry bomb had started. They didn’t even have a confirmed case of sabotage or terrorism. It smelled of an intelligence officer’s media management and he wondered who had done the managing and which organisation was calling the shots.
Clicking the off button on his remote, Gallen eased himself carefully onto his left foot, now strapped from below his knee to the edge of his toes. Angry purple colouring ran up his thigh above the strapping and on the other leg the purple down the side of his calf was peeled back, showing wet flesh, covered in what looked like Vaseline.