First Lieutenant Gerald Yamato found himself in the twin-thirty crossfire from three tanks. He felt Satori shudder with each hit, and there were a lot of hits. For a blissful moment he thought he could stay in the fight.
Then his controls went mushy and the solid stream of smoke from his engine compartment burst into bright flame washing back over his cockpit. Another minute in this situation would kill him. He immediately ejected the canopy and, after jerking his seat restraints free, threw himself into the smoky wake of his doomed P-61, which screamed out of control down into the awesome canyon a thousand feet below the battle.
Lieutenant Yamato wrenched his chute around so he could see as much of the battle as possible. While he watched, one of the Eureka fighters suddenly flamed, trailed smoke and exploded.
“Looked like Christenson’s ship,” he said to himself, feeling his heart lurch. Mike was the squadron mascot, a classic brilliant, self-doomed fuckoff.
A tree drifted past and he realized he had better pay mind to his own predicament; for him the fight with the Russians was over. An explosion from below pulled his attention to the bottom of the valley. His fighter had impacted at the edge of a river.
Someone had claimed it was the Delta River.
The wind pushed him farther down the huge canyon. The artist in him took a quick moment to appreciate the majestic beauty of the valley. The miles-long ridge on the far side rippled in shades of reds, pinks, greens, and even light purples, like a Technicolor layer cake cut and toppled on its side.
Then the pragmatic flier took over and he worked his chute in order to come down near the river, rather than hang up in the middle of the forest bordering both sides of the obviously swift-moving water. Even before the ground rushed up and grabbed him, he wondered what equipment he had and would it be enough?
His landing was textbook; take the shock with his feet together and collapse in a rolling tumble. Unlike the field back in the Napa Valley, this one was covered with boulders and rocks the size of his head.
He landed on a small boulder and his feet slid off to the right. He threw his arm out and instantly jerked it to his side again—he couldn’t risk breaking it. His shoulder took the majority of the impact and immediately went numb. Jerry threw out his hands and stopped himself.
The parachute settled on the rocky floodplain, began to fill from the constant breeze moving alongside the water. He pushed himself up and jerked the shroud lines, collapsing the silk. His shoulder hurt like hell but he swiftly pulled the lines into a pile at his feet.
Just as his hands touched the silk canopy, he heard a massive explosion from above. He looked up the incredible slope. At first he saw nothing but smoke pouring down from the road on the canyon rim. Then he saw awful movement.
At least nine Russian tanks avalanched down the steep wall, rotating in deadly descent, thunderously smashing flat the rocks and trees before crashing into each other or bouncing farther out into the canyon. Huge boulders and entire swaths of trees boiled in a descending dust-shrouded dance of death.
Behind the maelstrom tumbled a boulder larger than any tank, gouging out sixty-meter-wide swaths of mountainside before spinning out into the air again, following the doomed Russian war machines into the abyss.
Lieutenant Jerry Yamato felt sorry for the poor bastards in the tanks, even though they were all probably dead at this point; that was a hell of a way to go.
Some of the tanks didn’t explode when they finally hit bottom. Some did. And Jerry wasn’t sure how many tanks the boulder hit when it landed. Everything ended about a quarter mile from him.
With the river twisting along the bottom of the valley, and the trees bordering the floodplain, the end result was completely obscured. A huge cloud of dust swirled into the breeze along the river and quickly dissipated.
A Eureka fighter suddenly roared down through the valley and screamed over him as he wildly waved his arms. Then it was gone. All of the beautiful, darting silver planes disappeared and the valley went silent, as if resting after the extensive disruption.
Jerry Yamato felt very alone. He looked around at the valley walls, the trees, the rocks, the now-audible river. For the very first time he realized he was completely on his own.
The Republic of California fighters were on their way north to Chena Redoubt where the Dená Republik Army, their new ally, was fighting for its life against the Imperial Russian Army. The transports held 960 R.O.C
airborne troops who hoped to make a difference. The fighters would do everything they could to aid the Athabascan revolution.
But how long would it take Major Hurley to remember Lieutenant Yamato and where he was shot down? Did Hurley even know Jerry was still alive? The plane that flew over hadn’t come back; had the pilot seen him at all?
They were on their way to next part of the battle; would any of them make it to Fort Yukon? It might be months before anyone came looking for him; or never.
“Okay, airman,” he said aloud. “Time to take stock.”
He stuffed his chute between two rocks and put his flight helmet on top of it to keep it from blowing away in the vigorous breeze. In moments he emptied his pockets and stared down at the result. Two protein-concentrate bars, a canteen of water, a survival knife, his service .45 automatic, and two full clips of rounds constituted his total belongings.
He felt grateful he wore good combat boots and a warm flight suit. Stuck down in the front of the flight suit was his garrison cap. Not three months ago he had gone through a survival course refresher.
With the abrupt start of the North American War he had been eligible for full flight status because he had remained current with training and preparedness protocol. Otherwise he wouldn’t be here.
Jerry Yamato laughed out loud. He peered around at the stunted spruce, which grew at a forty-five degree angle, then up at the sky which still held a couple hours of daylight. The thinning smoke from the wreckage of his P-61 caught his attention.
He shrugged out of his parachute harness and carefully propped it up on the highest rock within ten feet. He didn’t want to lose what little he had. Stuffing the PC bars in his pocket and putting the rest of his gear in place, he started toward Satori, his beautiful fighter.
She had nosed in at full speed and exploded on impact; what was left burned. The lump in his throat surprised him. The P-61 had just been a machine, a very beautiful one to be sure, but still…
Wiping away a tear, he looked around the crash site, maybe something usable had been thrown clear. He found nothing and searched the sky again. The smoke would draw any aircraft in the area.
Two billowing columns of smoke a half mile away caught his attention. The tanks, he thought.
Maybe there’s something salvageable.
Keeping a moving eye on the terrain all about him, he moved carefully down the river.
As a boy he had been a member of the Bear Scouts of California, he had earned every woodcraft badge possible. In flight school he was first in the class in the survival portion of training. He’d just had that refresher a couple of months ago.
So why did he feel frightened? Must keep one’s morale up, that’s what it says in the book, he thought.
Turrets, ripped off the tank hulls in their descent, lay randomly amongst the bent and broken steel. Tracks and bogeys lay scattered, macabre prizes from the Devil’s piñata. Only small flames remained in the two burning machines but he could feel their heat from fifty meters away.
Jerry thought the destroyed machines looked naked.
“You cry over your plane and now you’re sad about enemy tanks?” he said out loud. “Did you hit your head when you ejected?”
He stared at the ripped hulls, knowing there might be items inside that could enhance his odds of survival. He also knew the remains of the crews rested in the heavy metal. This was part of why he had elected to join the air corps rather than the infantry—he didn’t want to see stuff like this up close.
First Lieutenant Jerry Yamato, RCAF, took a deep breath and walked over to the first hemorrhaged hull and peered inside. Trying to ignore the heavy, rusty-colored slime coating the interior, he looked for equipment. When he saw the uniform pierced through with bone splinters, he turned and vomited.
He flipped off the canteen cover and rinsed his mouth.” What a wussy I am, he thought. There hadn’t been anything obviously useful in the tank.
For long moments Jerry eyed the closest turret, trying to justify skipping the whole thing.
“Gotta look, dammit,” he said and spat off to the side.
He trudged over to the turret. The barrel stub of the .88 cannon bent to one side, looking for all the world like a comma with a ragged tail. The inside lay empty.
“Damn.” Jerry leaned against the metal bulk and slid down to a sitting position, staring at the other wrecks. Was there nothing here he could use?
He stared up at the canyon wall. Should he try to climb out here, or follow the river until it either joined a larger body of water or went past a town? His destroyed charts mocked him; he should have looked at them more carefully.
“Who knew?” He shrugged and let his head fall forward.
Splaang! A bullet impacted on the turret where his head had just rested. The boom of the rifle pierced him through with terror and echoed off down the valley.
He jerked in fright and threw himself behind a large rock. Two more bullets smeared across the turret where his body had leaned. This time the rifle reports were just sounds.
Yamato made himself small and squirmed behind a boulder.
Adrenaline kicked in and his terror turned to anger. He pulled out his .45 and peered up the slope. Where was the son of a bitch?
He thought for a second. Who was the son of a bitch? Had one of the Russian troopers come all the way down here from the road to check for survivors?
It wouldn’t take a genius to know there could have been no survivors. Sudden doubt washed through him. Could one of the crew have survived? Or had he run into an unfriendly local?
The odds against both were astronomical. Nobody human could survive that steel avalanche and it was scores of miles to the nearest village. But someone out there was trying to kill him. Yamato decided to go with the assumption he faced a surviving Russian.
Okay, that meant the man was close to the path the tank made on its way down. Jerry thumbed on the safety of the .45 as quietly as possible. He didn’t want the damned thing going off accidentally while he was moving.
Fortune had given him something. Medium to large boulders lay scattered across the floodplain. Taking his time and moving as quietly as possible, he squirmed his way from boulder to boulder toward the canyon wall.
He had to outflank the bastard. His shoulder ached and he had to piss. He tried to ignore the distracting elements, knowing his life depended on it.