Chapter Twenty: Fight and Flight
5 kilometers west of Mount Churrientos
Casa Roja Province, Costa Luna
31 October 2013
0745 hours local time
"Are you sure that we're going the right way?" Carter Mason asked Rosalinda Fiore for what to be the hundredth time as they tried to make it to their rendezvous with the rest of the PPP agents on time.
Rosie looked down at the compass mounted alongside her wristwatch before turning to face Carter and replying, "Yes, Carter, we are still headed in the right direction, bearing 315 to be specific. We are still on our way to our primary landing zone."
"If that's the case then why aren't we there already?" Carter scoffed, mostly to herself.
After the Socialist attack on the hidden base in the caldera of Mount Churrientos, the eight PPP agents embedded with the Costa Lunero Loyalists (Carter, Rosie, Leo Argus, Vyacheslav Klimov, Helen Vylander, Lena Porres, Jake Rackham, and Andre Umbelievich) had gathered in a small clearing where they planned their next move. They then split up into four pairs and went their separate ways, going down four randomly selected paths that would eventually lead them to their primary landing zone. Carter and Rosie had the most direct path from the clearing to the LZ, but numerous Socialist patrols and aerial flybys made sure that they failed to make the 0730 deadline given to them by their pilot. It was already 0745 hours and they were still probably a kilometre or so away from the LZ. And their pilot had made it abundantly clear to all of them that he only had a limited window in which he could land in the LZ and take off without arousing the suspicions of Socialist soldiers and helicopters.
"Ready for the last push, Rose?" Carter asked.
"As ready as I ever will be, Carter," Rosie replied. But two hours of walking and evading foot patrols had taken their toll on Rosie. She was a trained special agent of the International Agency for the Protection of World Monarchies but underneath all that toughness and training beat the heart of the consummate princess who was used to having her own way. But this princess had been forced to grow up and mature very fast after her father, King Mauricio III of Costa Luna had died at the prime of his life and she had to assume the throne at the tender age of 17. All the responsibility of leading a nation had been laid squarely on her shoulders ever since she had ascended to the throne, and the added time pressure of trying to make it to their rendezvous were only making it worse for her.
"Come on, Rose," Carter said, offering her hand. "I'll help you up." Rosie gladly accepted Carter's hand and stood up with barely a grunt of effort. However, after just what had felt like a second but was really five minutes, the drone of aircraft engines forced the two of them to take cover once again. Carter looked up and saw a Cessna 208 Caravan with the words FUERZA AEREA DE LA REPUBLICA SOCIAL spray-painted at the top of the fuselage. A man was standing just inside the Cessna's cargo door, which had been removed for this express purpose, shouting instructions to the pilot. The plane flew in a wide and lazy circle around the place where Carter and Rosie were hiding from its notice before it finally turned to the right and flew away.
"Please don't see us, please don't see us," Carter muttered, but the Cessna appeared to finally be heading away from their location. Something then landed in the mud between Carter and Rosie. Carter turned around to look and only had to see the pineapple-like case to know what it was. The two of them made to run away but the grenade exploded before they could move any further, knocking them to their feet, and Carter felt a loud ringing and buzzing in her ears before everything went black around her.
"Any sign of our remaining comrades, Segur?"
"Nothing, Vanya. I see no sign of them."
"Damn it," Ivan Arseni muttered. He turned the Mil Mi-24 helicopter that he was piloting back towards the coastline of Costa Luna for another visual sweep. "How many were we supposed to pick up again?" he asked.
"Eight, Ivan," Segur Sonaria, Arseni's Georgian (the country, not the state) co-pilot replied. "Four boys and four girls. So far we've picked up four boys and two girls. We're still two girls light."
"Do you think we should risk breaking radio silence?" Arseni asked.
"I wouldn't risk it if I were you, Vanya," Sonaria replied, "but if you think you should then feel free. We still have twenty minutes of fuel left before—bogey! Twenty clicks north-northeast of our position, I have a radar contact."
"Time to become Socialist, Comrade Sonaria," Arseni quipped, and then he switched to a known frequency used by the Army of Socialist Revolution. A few minutes later, he heard a voice on the frequency say in Spanish, "Good morning, Comrade Hind to our twelve o'clock! We are Cessna at your ten o'clock. Did you happen to see any Royalist scum roaming around this coast?"
"No, Comrade Cessna, I did not," Arseni replied in Spanish as well. "But I promise I will inform you if ever I see one."
"Very well, Comrade Hind. Until we meet again."
On the intercom, Arseni asked Sonaria, "So, are they far away enough now?"
"Hold on, Vanya… just another second more… and they're gone."
"Good riddance." Arseni returned his radio to its original frequency, but just as he did that the radio suddenly squawked to life, and a tinny and scratchy voice said, "…can anyone hear me?"
"Unidentified person on GUARD," Arseni replied on the radio, "this is Red Star 5-1. I can hear you. Please switch to MODE 2 so we can track you down."
"I am unable, Red Star 5-1," the voice replied. "My radio has been damaged."
"Please switch to MODE 2, unidentified contact on GUARD. I cannot track you down on GUARD."
"Repeat, I am unable to comply. My radio has been damaged!"
"Whoa!" Sonaria cried out. He had just seen explosion after explosion rock the forest to their right. "Looks like that Cessna is carpet-bombing that area something fierce!"
"I just hope that our remaining girl comrades were not there when those grenades were dropped," Arseni said.
Carter's ears were still ringing when she regained consciousness. Every sound she could hear was muffled: the drone of the Cessna's engine, the explosions of the grenades, and the garbled transmissions from the radio clipped to the shoulder of her ballistic vest. Wait a minute, what?
"…please switch to MODE 2, contact, we cannot track you down on GUARD."
Someone was trying to contact Carter on the radio! But how did they know that she and Rosie were even there? It must have been sheer luck on their part.
"I am unable to switch to MODE 2, my radio has been damaged!"
Who was talking to the chopper? Rosie? But surely she still had to be out cold. There was no way that she was the one who was talking to the chopper. That could only mean that someone else was communicating with the chopper. But who was that someone? A Socialist soldier trying to lead the PPP chopper to a trap? Yes, that had to be the logical answer. It had been a popular Socialist tactic back in 2009, luring unsuspecting Loyalist choppers to where the Socialists' surface-to-air missiles could bring down the Loyalist flyers with near impunity.
Slowly, as her head was still swimming from the concussive blasts from the grenades, Carter reached for the radio clipped to her ballistic vest, switched the frequency to MODE 2, and then she pushed TRANSMIT.
"I have a signal, Vanya!" Segur Sonaria shouted. "It's on MODE 2!"
"That has to be our real comrades, Segur," Ivan Arseni said. "Whoever was talking to us on GUARD must have been a Socialist. Sneaky bastard. Where is the signal coming from, anyway?"
"Behind us, Vanya, on heading 185."
"Come on, Rose!" Carter said. "Just a few steps more and we're home free! You can do it!"
Carter was holding Rosie up as the latter was still lightheaded and disoriented from the explosions of the grenades from the Cessna as they ran for the coast. They were both running away from the Cessna's carpet-bombing and towards the safety of their chopper.
"Just a few more steps now!" Carter repeated, turning it into a sort of mantra for the both of them. She was now carrying both her rifle and Rosie's, and she could already feel her reserves of energy and adrenaline beginning to run out. Her feet were also telling her to stop running already. Never wear Chuck Taylors during a war, Carter silently reminded herself. They are not good footwear for running from a carpet bombing!
As soon as she formed that thought, Carter tripped over a root, spilling herself and Rosie over. "No, no, no!" Carter moaned. She tried to pick herself up again but the uneven ground of the forest and the weight of her ballistic vest and the rifles wouldn't let her. She really and sincerely felt like just laying there and giving up, but then she saw a familiar hand offer itself to her.
"No time to waste, Carter!" Rosalinda Fiore said above Carter's face. "The coast is just a few more meters ahead. Let's go!"
A sudden jolt of newfound energy surged into Carter, and she reached up to take Rosie's hand and picked herself up nimbly from the ground. "I'll take that," Rosie said, taking her M4 rifle from Carter's hand, and the two of them made that final mad dash to the coast and the LZ. They leaped over tree roots and ducked in between the spaces between the trees as they covered the remaining distance to the LZ. "Hey, we're here!" they shouted as they burst into the clearing, waving their arms to get noticed. "We're over here!"
But instead of a PPP Mil Mi-24, the two women were greeted by a Harbin Z-9 helicopter of the Army of Socialist Revolution. Eight unguided rockets hung from detachable pods on the chopper's sides and they all seemed to be aimed at the two of them. They were also close enough to see the face of the pilot, who had no look of satisfaction on his face for finding the two Loyalists who had evaded their patrols for so long. The barest hint of emotion on him was the taut and grim line that made up his mouth.
"So this is how it ends," Carter muttered. "We're going to get blown up by rockets."
"There are worse ways to die," Rosie said. "It may not be a noble death but it is also far from an ignoble death. We can still laugh at death's face when he finally comes to claim us."
"It's been a pleasure working with you, your Majesty."
"The pleasure is mine, Miss Mason."
The rocket streaked towards its target with a single-minded determination, unaware of the unfolding drama in which it was about to play a very big part. The rocket then reached its target and exploded in a brilliant fireball. But this wasn't a rocket aimed at Carter and Rosie; in fact, the rocket was an infrared missile launched by Ivan Arseni from his Hind helicopter towards the Z-9 chopper. The flaming wreckage of the Chinese-made chopper fell to the ground and its place in the sky was taken by the Hind.
"Your knight in shining armor has come in time to rescue you, your Majesty," Arseni said on the radio.
"Man, you really took your sweet time taking that chopper down, didn't you?" Carter quipped.
"Yes, indeed. Well, what are you two waiting for? Get in the chopper so we can get out of here!"
"Oh, my God, he actually said it," Carter said as she and Rosie boarded the Hind.
"What exactly did he say again?" Rosie asked.
"He said 'Get to the choppa!' I think Arseni just went full Schwarzenegger!"
As Carter and Rose boarded the chopper, their fellow PPP agents cheered them on. "That was amazing!" Leo Argus said. "Let's never do that again!"
"Agreed," Carter sighed as she settled into her seat. She leaned back and closed her eyes, and just like that, she fell asleep.
"Ivan, I have the Cessna at our eleven o'clock," Segur Sonaria said as he tracked down the radar contact with the Socialist Cessna. "What do you think we should do with them? They're probably already reporting our quote-unquote 'duplicity' to their chain of command."
"There's nothing more we can do about that, Segur," Ivan Arseni replied. "We're not here to take down the Socialists' choppers, much as we both want to do so and that Chinese piece of junk notwithstanding. Our job is to recover the agents and get them out of here ASAP and that's what we've done. Let's get out of here before we have to set off any more fireworks."
"Copy that, Vanya… Hang on, I have a bogey at our seven o'clock!" Sonaria said. He turned around in his seat to have a look at the new contact. "It's a goddamned Havoc, Vanya!"
"A goddamned Havoc?" Arseni repeated. "How in the world are the Socialists getting their hands on this kind of hardware?" The Mil Mi-28 Havoc was one of Russia's most advanced attack helicopters and were not sold by the Russian government to just about anybody. If the rumors were true that the Russian Ultranationalists had a deal in place with Magnus Kane's Socialists then the Ultranationalists must have contacts or even supporters within the Russian armed forces willing to give away their technology to support the Ultranationalists' cause.
"I'll be damned if I had the barest fucking clue," Sonaria replied, "but I wouldn't be surprised if the answer starts with 'ultra' and ends with 'nationalists.'"
The missile streaked through the sky and struck the chopper in the right-side engine. The chopper's pilot was barely able to keep the helicopter aloft for a few seconds before the other engine seized up and burned out and the chopper fell out of the sky and crashed in a twisted and mangled heap of aluminium, titanium, and steel.
"Where in the world did that missile come from?" Segur Sonaria asked breathlessly. He had just seen a surface-to-air missile come out of nowhere to bring down the Havoc hard.
"I have just taken care of your problems, mi amigos!" an unknown voice said to them on the radio.
"Who is this?" Arseni asked. "Identify yourself!"
"Tis just your friendly neighbourhood Prime Minister Valderama!"
Arseni turned his head towards where he had seen the missile come from. Andres Valderama, the prime minister of the Kingdom of Costa Luna and leader of the Loyalists fighting against Magnus Kane and his Socialist invaders, was standing there with a spent Stinger SAM tube on his shoulder. He waved his free hand at the helicopter and Arseni flashed his landing lights in reply before he turned around in the direction of the Costa Negra Islands.