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Boom, boom, boom… “We’re getting friendly close sir and we will play tonsil hockey with these fucks in the next minute.”

“Shin, sit rep,” Webb barked.

“No good, Sir. He is wedged in too tight.”

“Fuck!” Webb spat. He sighed heavily. “Shin, we must show respect.”

“Understood, Sir,” Shin quickly pulls his Glock and fires a round in the back of the pilot’s head. He says a quick prayer, then turns to exit the helicopter as the copilot just stood there with his mouth open. “Come on, Sir. We have to leave.” Shin climbed his way up, but was grabbed by his leg and pulled down. He fell on the deck and was suddenly having to fend off punches.

“You fucking asshole! You murdered him!” Shin was getting ready to retaliate when the punches stopped. He looked up to see the copilot pointing his pistol at him, tears streaming down his face. “You motherfucker! You just fucking killed him in cold bloo.…” Bang! The copilot slumped and fell to the ground with a hole in his forehead.

Neville re-holstered his Glock. “Come on brother, we don’t have time for this shit.” He stuck his hand out to help Shin out of the downed chopper. They joined Webb and Dr. Costa running into the nearest hangar.

“We need to find some transportation, because it’s looking like we’re driving from here on out,” Webb looked at Dr. Costa. “Look for any available vehicles.” He stopped her, “With keys. That BS in the movies doesn’t work with any vehicles made in the last 20 years.” She nodded, and they separated, leaving Webb to look around the hangar and not finding anything. He went out the side door of the hangar to check the parking lot.

The lot was mostly empty except for a few sedans, which he quickly checked two of with no luck. He went to check a third when he heard an engine and then a high rev. Running to the front of the hangar, he saw a 4-wheel drive pickup coming at him at a top rate of speed. It jumped the curb, scraped the corner of the building and stopped about 10 feet from Neville. He was white as a sheet and cussing in some French/Cajun/English mangle.

Dr. Costa opened the door. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Shit,” Webb exclaimed. They started running for the truck, “Neville you drive, Doctor in the back with Shin and I’ll navigate.” They all were in and Neville took off quickly, putting distance between them and the horde.

CHAPTER 17

Priest continued to hail Webb on the radio and the lack of contact had him worried about connecting back up with the rest of the Team.

“I can’t reach Webb, but our plan stays the same. We make our way to Louisville and regroup there.” They had been in the air for about 15 minutes when they felt vibrations in the aircraft.

“Doug, you feel that?” Priest looked over to him.

“Yeah, and I don’t like it. Feels like it could be our vertical stabilizer or our tail rotor linkage. Either way, we should set down and check it out.”

“Copy that.” Priest turns around, “We need to check out some mechanical issues with the bird and we must set down to do it. You boys know the drill.”

“What do you think, Sarge?” Doug

asked. “Either a huge parking lot or in the middle of a highway so we can see anything coming from a mile or so.” They were out in the middle of nowhere, so the places to set down were plentiful.

Doug looked around at the landscape, “If I can guess to our location, I would say somewhere around Auburn, twenty miles from Fort Wayne. I have basically just been following Rt. 69 south since we determined our GPS is tits up.”

A spot in the middle of Rt. 69 with excellent 360-degree visibility was identified and Doug descended. The vibrations had gotten worse and were much worse when they landed. The team exited and deployed to provide security.

Priest kept his head up to search for any potential threat but followed Doug. He noticed quite a few more bullet holes in the side than he previously thought were there. Doug stopped three quarters of the way down the tail boom. He stuck his finger in quite a sizable hole in the sheet metal. He opened the tail motor drive shaft cover and started cursing.

Priest walked up behind Doug, “Not good, I take it?”

“No, not good at all. Looks like a couple of those rounds hit us and damaged the tail rotor drive shaft.” Doug was inspecting the rest of the tail.

“Is it safe to fly?”

“Normally, no. We would usually ground a bird for something like that, but these aren’t normal times. It won’t last forever and with the centrifugal force during rotation makes the damage feel a lot worse in flight.”

Priest thought for a second. “Ok, we take it back up and fly fairly close to the ground in case this thing goes and we drop from the sky. We should be able to auto-rotate and perform a skid landing. On our way to Louisville, we will scout for other transportation, possibly a vehicle, and drive the rest of the way? It shouldn’t be but a few hundred miles.”

“Yeah, that’s our best bet.” Doug said nervously.

Priest whistled loudly, stuck his finger in the air while moving his hand in a circle, the hand sign for mount up. They ascended back in the air and Priest relayed the plan to the team. “Doug, try to get us past Fort Wayne, because we already know what that place is like.”

The sky was blue, with no clouds, and was as peaceful as Priest had ever seen it. The peacefulness almost made you forget about everything that had happened. It offered a facade that everything was ok, that everything would be ok, the past long forgotten. It made you think the events of the last 48-72 hours were nothing more than a nightmare and something that no longer existed while you were in the air. He knew that wasn’t the case, but pretended for a few moments and enjoy the serenity while it lasted.