Cascadia Fallen: The Complete Trilogy, page 87
This is it, son, John thought. He was so tempted to begin air controlling for him, but he knew the cartel was listening. Any extra radio traffic was just giving away information—everything had to be spoken in memorized phrases. John had to stay on his picket, ready to provide a last-minute laser for the glider. His only backup was Earl, who would have to scramble to the top of the shaky and leaning Amazon building to be able to lase the cartel’s camp if something happened to John.
Tucker battled the buffeting winds, resisting the temptation to check out the beautiful sunrise that was just forming. He caught the first pair of blinking strobes in his NOD and started decreasing his throttle, trying to get down to about two hundred feet above 8th Avenue. He descended over an older Seattle neighborhood of apartment buildings and museums, crossing the broken I-5 highway and Washington State Convention Center with a slightly west-of-true-north heading. He pulled on his right steering cable with just a few ounces more of pressure than his left, banking around a circular, fifteen story building and shooting for the canyon gap. A block later he had to course correct the opposite, taking on a slight left turn in the process.
The winds hadn’t been as bad as he was expecting. Tucker figured it was mainly due to so many of the buildings missing their glass—it was pouring through them naturally, versus being forced to go around and in between them.
He could see firefights happening below. The whole point behind this canyon run was that unlike his father, who had high-altitude that allowed him to shut off his motor—he had to keep power applied at near-full throttle to tow the dead weight behind him. Up in the sky, and he would’ve been heard and seen, and surely shot down before getting the precious cargo delivered. About mid-run, Tucker could see the strobes were on 7th avenue for just two blocks, before picking back up on 8th. He had to trust the ground team that they had secured that zone of enemy. He grabbed his brake cables and pulled down on the leading edge of his wing for just a moment, to change the angle it was attacking the air. He stowed those, pulling hard on the left steering strap to perform a wingover maneuver that allowed him to practically pivot in the air. He kept the throttle up, knowing that providing forward propulsion was the only way to keep the glider towing properly.
Tucker’s wing and the homemade guided missile broke through the small gap between the U.S. District Court building and the tower to its north. He banked to the right and flew a block, reacquiring the next set of strobes to the northeast. He looked hard right quickly to see what had driven this dangerous maneuver. There was an intense firefight happening.
John Cronin caught first sight of his son and the cargo as Tucker had veered back over to 8th Avenue to resume his path to the Seattle Center. After one last, round skyscraper to pass, he was through the canyon and into the dangerous open. Tucker adjusted his cables and pressed the last ten percent of throttle he had to the max, beginning to climb.
John had been performing a loop to the west of the Seattle Center. When he estimated about a minute until his son’s arrival, he cut his throttle and pulled slightly on his brakes, dumping air and altitude. He guided himself toward the gap near 8th Avenue. When Tucker broke through, John Cronin was only four blocks west and about four hundred feet higher, travelling mostly east. One last adjustment, John told himself. He pulled on his left cable and banked himself to aim toward the vehicle in the football field…the one with all the antennas. John pulled the rifle hanging from his neck up and placed the scope up to his eyes. He found the pressure pad that engage his aiming laser with his left thumb. His invisible laser glowed like a bright green rope in his NODs. He finally settled it on the important-looking truck…
Reynaldo Hernandez had grown tired of monitoring the battle behind a screen and radio operators. Incompetent fools! he screamed in his head. When this is over, I’m going to burn you alive! Then drown you! Or, perhaps, invent a way to do it at the same time! He ran out of the vehicle, snatching the battle rifle out of the hands of the nearest guard. His two personal guards had to run to catch up as he headed east. Three minutes later, a rapidly moving and angry Rey was breaking through the roof access of the south building of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He found one of the many machine gun bunkers he’d worked so hard to establish over the preceding days. “Can you see anything?!” he demanded angrily.
“Mostly just muzzle flashes, Jefe!” one of the two men replied. “Over toward the east!” he added, pointing past his sandbags and toward 8th Avenue. Most of the illumination was being provided by the moon, but as the dawn built in the eastern sky, the shadows were growing long. The difficult visibility was compounded by the muzzle flashes and grenade explosions in dozens of downtown locations, the reflections shining through the broken gaps where windows used to exist.
Rey was scanning with the outpost’s binoculars and trying to keep an ear on radio traffic. He grabbed his handheld set and screamed, “I want an update on those IR beacons! Now!”
“Jefe, this is Unit 116! They’re fighting ferociously to keep the street clear of us! It doesn’t make sense!”
Rey replied with a loud word that would have gained him an FCC fine, if the FCC had still had the ability to levy it. He dropped the radio to the roof. “Vamanos!” he yelled to his guards, getting ready to go back to his CP. In his anger, he had defaulted to his native tongue. Something caught his attention. “What is that?” He looked around.
“Que?” one of his guards questioned.
“The noise?! What’s that noise?!” Having been in the insulated truck most of the night, his ears had not been rung by the gunfire too much. He started scanning around.
“Give me your night vision!” he demanded of the machine gun team.
“The batteries are dead, Jefe!”
After Rey repeated that FCC non-compliant word at the top of his lungs, he started looking south toward downtown. There! he thought. “Right there!” What is that?!” In an almost slow motion, cartoon-ish feel, Rey caught the motion of…something. “Is that a bird? No, a drone! They have a—”
The glider, though it had been spray-painted black, was just too big not to be noticed. It course corrected up and down with just a slight hint of left to right. It was headed northwest. Rey followed the trace of its path, right back to his…”Noooooooo!” Reynaldo Hernandez saw a giant toy, seemingly being radio-controlled by someone, fly directly for his Command Vehicle. “Shoot it down!” he screamed at anyone listening. As his machine gunners tried desperately to swing their barrel west and acquire the glider, Rey began looking around for the source of the noise. He saw a parachute steering away to the east, only noticeable when it crossed over something on fire. It was climbing and an engine could easily be seen pushing whoever it was to safety.
The gun-team had lost the descending craft below the threshold of the building before they could get a shot off. With fire in his eyes, Rey scanned around and found his radio near a sandbag. “Everyone get out of the—”
WHUH-BOOOOMMMM!
Both Cronin men had caught themselves a case of the giggles—and tunnel vision. The fact that his son had just pulled off what was perhaps the greatest paramotor stunt ever made the old man proud. John started his motor back up after he lowered the rifle slung around his neck. Tucker was supposed to go back and grab the back-up device, but John could see the young man bank north. He watched his son’s wing and, it eventually turned west almost a half-mile north of the fiery center of the cartel’s operation. John had had enough. “Nougat! Stay focused!”
The young man had been overcome with adrenaline upon seeing his heroic deeds pay off. All of his recent training had fallen to the wayside. “Did you see that, Dad?!” he screamed excitedly into the radio. “We beat ‘em! They’re going to fall apart at the seams, now!” The younger Cronin had become mesmerized by the initial, devastating explosion, which was now causing vehicles, fuel bladders, and ammunition supplies to catch on fire.
“Nougat!” John yelled in his dad voice. “Gain elevation, bank north, and vacate the area! Immediately!” John had resumed a northerly flight between the cartel and Elliot Bay, trying to regain the safety of altitude.
He heard machine gun fire erupt, as several locations around the cartel encampment started firing at his son. It would be a matter of moments before one of them was able to gain a bead on him. “Descend!” John yelled into the radio. “Forget altitude! They’ve seen you! You need to hit the treetops!”
Tucker started to execute an emergency drop by cutting throttle and pulling on the brakes. He had to be careful as to not do it so long that he collapsed his wing entirely. In the rescinding fires that had enveloped the football field cartel basecamp, John caught a motion rapidly ascending from the fountain area east of Climate Pledge Arena. “Dammmmiiiitttt!” he screamed out loud before keying the radio. “Nougat! Evacuate! You have incoming!”
Earl had been intensely listening to the exchange, trying to scan the area with binoculars. He had acquired Tucker and was trying to see where he would go down, should it come to that. The young paramotorist was wildly zigging and zagging to escape the machine gun fire. Suddenly, a quad copter drone came shooting out of nowhere. Though it could only match speed with the paramotor, it had cut him off with a sharp angle. Whoever had flown it shot it straight into Tucker’s cords keeping him attached to the wings.
“Nooooo!” John yelled, as he watched his son’s wing start to collapse. The youngster had pulled a series of evasive maneuvers that had put him dangerously close to the cartel’s eastern perimeter. Time slowed down for John, as he suddenly became paralyzed with the realization he was going to watch his son die the same way he had to watch his friend die in his recurring nightmares. He made sure his throttle was as high as it could be and changed course. There was a natural point where experienced paramotor pilots knew they could glide and make a landing somewhere. John watched his son deploy his reserve chute as he fell. The device came out and inflated, slowing the descent as he lost sight of the boy somewhere a couple of blocks southwest of the Gates Foundation. He cut his engine and began his descent, hell-bent on getting to his son before the cartel did.
“I got him,” Earl yelled to Larry, Renee, Jessica. “Let’s go! Girls, follow me! Larry! Gain some altitude!” With that, Earl Garren and his two female warriors ran north as fast as they could scan for threats.
29
Ultimate.
Tahoma’s Hammer Plus 40 Days.
“It was some sort of guided bomb!” Nick yelled to Buddy Chadwell, who was on the roof of the ten-story apartment building with him. They were west-southwest of the explosion, and the rest of his squad was pulling security at the base of the building to ensure they could make it off. He had continued to watch the action through his binoculars.
“Do you want me to start getting your fancy scope out of the case?” Buddy asked.
“No! This thing is unfolding too fast! We’ll be moving in a couple of minutes!” the experienced veteran told him. “Hold up!” He was watching the action unfold. “There’s a parasail!” he exclaimed. “The kind with a motor! They must’ve dropped it!” The multiple bursts of gunfire caught his alert eyes. “That dude’s going to be in deep kimchee!”
“There’s another one!” Buddy yelled, causing Nick to look high up and to his left.
He swung the binoculars. “He’s turning toward the one being chased!” Nick started looking that way again. It took him several seconds to reacquire Tucker’s deflated wing.
“The first one is falling! Wait! Some sort of reserve parachute!” It dawned on Nick quickly that the cartel would make that man pay dearly and slowly for what he’d done. “Get Phil on the horn! Tell him what’s up. I know exactly where that guy fell! We’re too far away here—let’s get going!”
John pulled hard on the brakes as he drifted at almost thirty miles per hour barely four feet over the ruins and wreckage of Denny Way, stopping a mere fifty feet shy of the concrete wreckage that used to be the monorail. He estimated Tucker was two blocks north and two blocks east of where he was letting his wing slam to the ground. As he started to undo the leg straps on his motor harness, a bullet ricocheted off the ground next to him. He realized that someone from the south was shooting at him. He ran back toward his wing to get some slack in the lines, and then ran around an abandoned car to take cover. He squatted behind the wheel and axle and unclipped his wing, and then finished doffing the motor. They must be a couple of blocks away still. He bolted to the corner to his east and turned running north, out of sight of whoever had been approaching from downtown.
John kept his rifle up, trying to scan in all directions in the free-for-all shootout that Seattle had become. He climbed to the top of the monorail wreckage and scanned along the top of it, all the way to where the Space Needle had crushed it in its fall. Clear as its gonna be! He crawled over the debris and continued his journey, desperate to save his son. He cut up a long alley, using the ruins of a destroyed apartment building as cover as he ran north. He rounded another corner and saw Tucker’s wing, lying in a heap in the old Best Western parking lot. John Cronin started sprinting for his son.
As he cleared the corner of the building to his north, crossing Taylor Street, a burst of fully automatic fire from a Humvee to the north hit the pavement two feet in front of the rapidly stopping senior Cronin. He scrambled backwards. He was once again covered by the building to his north but was in the wide open to any threats from his east. He could see Earl and his small team approaching from that direction.
“Dad!” his son called into the radio. “I-I’m hurt! I can hear them coming!”
“Nougat! This is Chocolate Actual!” John heard in his earpiece. “We’re approaching from your east!”
The fog and confusion of battle was landing on John Cronin, who could think of only one thing—I must rescue my son!
John Street, Earl thought, consulting the map after reading the street sign. Now that’s ironic. “How we doin’, ladies?!” Earl asked tensely. “Remember to speak up when in doubt!” They were covering his rear flank while he tried to figure out an approach to get to Tucker.
“Those cartel we cleared off 7th and 8th are east of us!” Jessica yelled. “It’s a matter of time before they find us!”
“Have faith!” Earl commanded. “The rest of Tarboo is coming in to take that heat off of us! Right now—we got to save that kid!” He looked up, not liking the parking lot and trees before him. He only had a couple of blocks to go, but a belt-fed had an angle on him was chewing up pavement when he tried to poke an eye around the corner. Effer must be right on the corner of the Gates Building, he thought. And it sounds like there’s a second one to the west.
“Okay, girls! Keep it locked down here! I’m going to try to clear this shooting gallery!” He no sooner than made it ten feet when fifty-caliber bullets started chipping up the asphalt in front of him. Dammit to hell! He screamed in his head as he made his way back behind his tree. Definitely two of them!
“Chocolate Sniper One, are you listening?” Earl keyed up on his radio. Please be paying attention, Larry!
“I’m hearin’ ya,” came the country drawl.
“Can you reach out and touch someone?! Need you to make a long-distance call, old timer!”
Larry had made his way to a ten-story building on the south side of Denny Way and 9th Avenue. Without replying, he calculated his yardage using the built-in scale on his hunting scope. He took a guess on the wind and started adjusting the clicks on the scope. Without so much as a word, the old hunter exhaled half a breath and let the shot fly. He hit the sandbags below and to the right of the machine gunners on top of the Gates Building. He ejected his casing and rechambered, never taking his eye out of the scope.
“Sorry, Chocolate actual. I got ‘em to duck! Woulda been a hit on a bull elk, but no kill!”
“I want him alive!” Rey screeched through his teeth. He and his men had just dismounted. A full block south of the Gates Foundation building, one of his captured Humvees, complete with a belt fed machine gun, came to a screeching halt in the intersection of Taylor Avenue and Thomas Street. They were maintaining a close eye on the corner of a building a few blocks south, keeping a would-be rescuer at bay. The gun-nest on the Gates Building was covering Rey and his ground-based capture-team one block further east as they methodically bound past each other. As badly as Rey wanted to run, he knew there were militia elements all over the city just to the south. They undoubtedly fought-for and held a clear flying lane for this craft, Rey realized with an intense rage. An operation this man will regret for the rest of his pain-filled life!
Rey heard the snap of fifty-caliber rounds whizzing over his head, hitting the ground where a different rescuer had tried to slip through. “The pilot must be a block up and on the right!” Rey yelled to his men. “The far end of this hotel!” His men were all using fully automatic M-4 rifles. “You! Stay here!” he ordered one of them while popping and throwing a smoke canister to conceal their approach. “You two! Get on that corner!” he commanded, pointing a finger. He was dispersing his pawns—seventeen, counting himself—amongst the chess board, a small insurance policy in case the couple of hapless rescuers got lucky.
“Dad!” Tucker was yelling from the ground in front of a concrete pillar that held up the awning to the hotel. “I’m sorry!”
“Tucker!” John yelled. He stepped out, once again, and was almost hit by both machine gun and automatic rifle fire. He ducked as he took pieces of concrete shrapnel to the face. One chunk cracked his safety glasses, which he stripped off and tossed aside. The former cop had never felt so helpless in his life. “Arrrgghhhh!” he screamed, wishing he could wake himself up from the nightmare. “Hang on, Tucker!”
